Ahoy, squirts! Quint here. Hope your Labor Day weekend is still going strong. I had a lot of fun with my family, watching some classic flicks, and hitting the pool for what's likely the last time before the heat leaves us and my favorite season truly begins.
It could be that Fall's arrival is imminent, but I've got horror on my mind. When discussing the deep, rich legacy of the horror genre (and all its subgenres) there are a few titles that always rise to the top. The Exorcist is one of those films.
William Friedkin's The Exorcist is one of a only a few movies that didn't just scare audiences for its runtime, but impacted pop culture in such a way that it had a real influence on real life events. The number of reported exorcisms after the release of William Peter Blatty's book and Friedkin's movie shot through the roof, reaching numbers the world hasn't seen since the 1500s.
For religious people, especially Catholics, that movie documented reality just as much as Spielberg's Jaws documented a certain reality. Sharks really exist. They really do attack humans from time to time, so that means Jaws is real. For those more religiously inclined, demonic possession is just as possible as getting bitten by a shark when you go into the ocean.
The Exorcist is and always will be a classic. It's a movie of its time, of course. Anytime I see the movie with an audience there's always a laugh when the doctors light up cigarettes in the hospital, but those laughs are never there when Pazuzu is front and center. Friedkin's use of subliminal imagery, an amazing sound mix and some of the best make-up effects ever put on screen all combine with impeccable technical work, like cinematography and set design, to give us one of the best movies ever made, horror or not.
Today's image shows Friedkin working with Jason Miller, a smoking priest running through some blocking! I believe I snagged this off of Friedkin's Twitter stream a while back. Check it out:
I'm going to resist the urge to keep running with horror stuff so I don't run through all of the good ones before October actually gets here, so I'm switching gears a little bit to another world-changing '70s film showing off a royal space yacht. See ya' then!
-Eric Vespe
”Quint”
quint@aintitcool.com
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