Well, it’s taken me long enough, but I have finally seen this movie. I just finished the book, and decided I needed to watch the film.
Wow! This movie is pretty cool! I enjoyed the movie because the visuals were much scarier than what I had imagined while reading the book. However, as usual, the book gives much more insight into the characters.
A few differences between the book and movie(please forgive any butchering of names):
The book really showed how tortured Father Damien was and that his making the demon possess him was almost more for his relief than Regan’s.
The book also pointed out that Father Merrick had defeated this demon before.
Burke is displayed as MUCH more of an jerk in the book.
The secondary plot with Karl and Willie’s daughter is left out completely.
The detective is much more conniving in the book. He acts as though he is star struck and sort of a bumbling type. While he sometimes behaves this way in the movie, it isn’t shown as the detective using this as a strategy to make his interviews less formal.
I suppose I’ve rambled on enough. I’d like to hear your opinions about the book and/or the movie.
This is one of my favorite films. Some of the book was lost in the transfer, but it seems mainly for time constraints. Which version of the film did you see? Recently there’s a new version out which has scenes added from the original theatrical release.
I saw the one with the added scenes. I never saw the first one, though, so I don’t know which of the scenes were the added ones. I believe the scene where Regan spider walks down the stairs was added in. That one was really creepy!
Yeah, I liked the Detective (Kinderman, I believe?) better in the book. I always thought of him as a foreign type from reading the book. Anyway, I thought the subplots were good in the book but I guess it would have taken up too much time to keep them in the movie. Movies are like that. And I liked the little details in the book- that woman giving Chris the occult book.
But as for the movie, which I saw nearly exactly a year ago (on Sept 24 of 2000), it too was awesome. The spider walk scene- chilling, as was everything. Wonderful flick.
I think, though, I prefer Legion, the book sequel by William Peter Blatty…It was so much stranger (yeah, and that’s saying a lot). I don’t know if I remember a lot of it, it was one of those books so I’ll have to reread it sometime, but if you like The Exorcist and haven’t yet read Legion, I’d reccomend picking it up some time.
Thanks Zoggie, for the recommendation. I just went to amazon.com to check out Legion, and it is in limited availablity. Someone who reviewed the book said that The Exorcist III is based on this book, and that is one strange movie! I’m going to keep my eye out for Legion.
I was always convinced that the book cast much more doubt that is was the devil actually possessing Reagan. It seemed he went to an awful lot of trouble to throw in other things that it could be – but yet we are left with the certainty, despite those seeds of doubt, that it could be nothing but the devil (or demon or whatever).
In the movie, on the other hand, it’s Mr. Satan from the get-go. All the brain scans and medical stuff is just there to show what rational unbelievers we are all.
That movie is one scary dude. There’s all kinds of creepy noises on the sound track to give you the willies.
I always thought the whole point of the book is that her behavior was completely explainable through scientific and medical means. We aren’t supposed to know for sure whether she had some kind of illness or that she was truly possessed by a demon.
I used to scare my sister by telling her that Pazuzu (sp?) was underneath her bed. Mean mean bunny.
Well, the book searches for every possible medical reason to explain Regan’s behavior. As Ellen pointed out, there were lots of avenues explored to provide proof that it was a medical problem. Father Damien really had to pile up the evidence in order to convince the church to allow him to perform an exorcism.
In the movie it was like, “Are you sure, Father?” And Damien says, “Yes, quite”. And the church says, “Well then, have at it!”
Monster- I couldn’t get it at amazon.com either, but I found it at a library…You might have better luck there. (Hehe…can you tell I’m really plugging this?:))
Oh, one other thing- the book really seemed to make a big deal of the Oujia board and of the whole Reagan-is-upset-about-her-father subplot. But then, in general, books do expand more.
In the book, I too sort of wondered. I would think that, yeah, the title was The Exorcist so she had to be possessed. But on the other hand, the exorcist in the title could refer to someone trying to exorcize, and it could in fact have been something else. Actually, I think (and this is just me here) that the point is that we don’t know. And sometimes there are things that we will never know, not necessarily religious things, just things that are…out there. More of a philosophical thing.
Back to the movie, one of the great things about “The Exorcist” is that it’s very gritty. I know that there are logical explanations for how they did the special effects, but when I was watching it, I couldn’t help but feel I was watching a documentary. I mean, the feeling there…the mood. Does that make sense? That’s why I’m glad no one has tried to remake it (i.e, like Psycho), because a modern flick could do all those special effects, only they would look too slick, so real that it’s unreal. I guess you could say that the movie really went out of its way to show you the type of thing you don’t really want to be shown, and they didn’t try to tone it down.
Though incidentally- those medical scenes really were quite unnerving for me. Ugh…I shudder, thinking about that needle going into her neck…Ahhh!
At its heart, I always thought the book was really written about the topic of faith. Karras had essentially lost his faith, and believed that science could hold all the answers.
::reaches for his annotated copy::
Some quotes really caught me:
(Demon to Karras) “We must give you some reason for doubt” it croaked. “Some. Just enough to assure the final outcome.”
This spoke to the fact that the demon was trying his best to make its actions seem scientificly plausible.
And later:
“Then what would be the purpose of posession?” Karras said, frowning. “What’s the point?”
…followed by Merrin’s explanation, that it is to make us despair. And finally:
“And perhaps even Satan - Satan, in spite of himself- somehow serfes to work out the will of God.”
Essentially, this demon did God’s will eventually anyway, by bringing Karras back to the faith.
Good point, ThunderBunny. After all, the title of the book is The Exorcist, not The Possessed, so it’s not really about Regan or the devil at all, is it?
That’s very true. Also, the exorcism took up, what, all of 10-15 minutes of the movie. But it is the most important part. I thought that Father Damien’s losing his faith was so important to the book, but not really touched upon in the movie.
Yeah, So I’ve heard. That’s why I haven’t really bothered to watch the movie. It just can’t compare.
Though I’ll have to look out for the book “Legion”. Thanks for the tip.
The first time I read that book, it made quite the impression. I do remember Entertainment Tonight doing a piece in which they dug up some bits and pieces in the archives to find out that the author actually had some experience in this area, and talked about an exorcism that he got to witness (though not as a participant). Really brought it home.
I remember being very excited when the new release of the movie came out and took the time to peruse The Exorcist Web site. If you’d like some interesting behind-the-scenes sort of info, I found the site to be very informative, particularly about the spider-crawling scene and the demon’s voice (click on “The Sound of Silence”).
Those of you who found that chilling in the new version may wish to check out the last Exorcist film (the name of which escapes me at the moment, and I’m in a hurry), but it features an old woman crawling on the ceiling, Father Karras in an asylum, and the scariest late-night hospital scene of any film I have ever seen. Somebody help with the title, please?
… but I was writing at about 5 in the morning after working 12 hours so my foggy brain convinced itself that there might have been a subtitle, as in Exorcist II: The Heretic. Guess that wasn’t the case. See another thread of mine in GQ where I complain about losing my memory!
I just finished reading this a few days ago, and I really have to agree with ThunderBunny here: the book was much more of a character development following Fr. Karras’s faith, while the movie just tried (and succeeded, I might add) to be really scary. At the beginning of the book, Damien is borderline agnostic; he’s pretty much lost all his hope that there’s Something Out There. He wants to get his faith back, but he’s afraid that if he fools himself into believing for a while, and then starts doubting again, it’ll be too much for him. So he’s very very careful about accepting that Regan might be really possessed…much more careful, really than Regan’s supposedly atheistic mother. I think that’s really the significance of all the tests; Damien is trying very hard to prove that there’s nothing supernatural about the whole event.
