The Exorcist: The Movie
This is where I need to make a confession. I had never seen the Exorcist until last night. I bought it a few weeks ago used from Movie Stop (Shout out to Kristin, although I know it's Game Stop.) I have never seen the film because since I was very young, I've been scared of it. It always ranks as one of the scariest of all times. I had put it on my list with such gems as the Faces of Death films and the Texas Chainsaw Massacre (I'm terrified of chainsaws).
So I watched the movie with my wife the biggest scaredy cat in the world, and she wasn't scared and neither was I. The movie follows very closely with the book, which is very boring and takes a long time to build up to the point. The movie does the same thing. There is little bang for the hours of investment. I think that this was terrifying throughout the 1970's and partially through the 1980's but too much has changed. Life have become to horrific for this movie to continue being scary. I din't even find it that creepy.
I wonder if this movie suffers what many older "terrifying" movies suffer from, overexposure. It's been only a few years ago since I saw the orignal Psycho for the first time in its completeness. Again this is a movie I have been told was terrifying. It kept me more interested than the Exorcist, but it didn't deliver much bang either. I believe the Exorcist has the been the movie to beat, and it has been too many times to be scary. We get the images of the head twisting and the vomit. We don't get the masturbation scene too often though, but it wasn't really so scare as mildly amusing. I really think the invention of the slasher movie did this film in. Those movies are full of jumps and scares, even the bad ones. I think that movie goers except scary music and something jumping out at them. That's what we want, and the exorcist doesn't give that. It has the creepy music. Tubular Bells is one of the creepiest themes ever, but the movie comes up short.
I blame Freddy, Jason, Michael, and of course Bruce (the shark from Jaws) for this.
