The Exorcist

There have been rumors that the various Exorcist films were cursed.[5] (http://www.lsj.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20040819/THINGS010701/408190318/1055/news). Blatty, Schrader and von Sydow have discounted such tales as nonsense, used primarily for promotion. Charlton Heston was not only the driver, but the camera operator and sound man. Schrader's version will be issued on the same DVD with Harlin's version of the film, and will see limited theatrical release beginning May, 10, 2005. The camera was mounted on the hood of the car. Harlin's version did disappointing business, grossing about $40Million (the budget was about $30Million for Schrader's unreleased version, and another $50 for Harlin's). This was the first film where the driving scene was acutally filmed from the driven vehicle. I don't blame Renny Harlin, for he gave Morgan Creek, I promise you, precisely what Morgan Creek demanded: not shocking obscenity, but shocking vulgarity.". It was Welles' last Hollywood film.

Blatty was quoted in the New York Times, saying his screening of Harlin's version "was surely the most humiliating professional experience of my life, particularly the finale. The film is consistently on the Internet Movie Database's top 250 list, was #64 on American Film Institute's 100 Years, 100 Thrills, and has been deemed "culturally significant" by the United States Library of Congress and selected for preservation in the National Film Registry. Harlin's version was not widely screened for critics (and was generally panned by those critics who did see it). It was only later that Welles really got fat. who is a friend."[4] (http://www.nytimes.com/2005/05/02/movies/02exor.html). Welles appeared as grossly fat in the film and is shot from below to emphasize his corpulence, but in fact the fat is mostly padding. But then Renny Harlin came on, who I've worked with before .. It was Welles's first Hollywood film since Macbeth (1948), and he pulled out all the stops, beginning with the three-minute-long continuous tracking shot, as well as many dark litter-strewn streets, ominous oil wells, and deserted desert highways travelled by slick new American cars with huge tailfins.

I didn't like it and I didn't want to do it. The film went from 96 minutes to 111 minutes. but just a bunch of ideas about how to make the film scarier, basically by throwing in unmotivated scares in every second scene. The producer had put the credits over this shot, but Murch moved the credits to the end as Welles had wanted. The New York Times quotes Skarsgard as saying that the updated script "wasn't really a script .. The most striking change was the opening shot, more than three minutes long, all shot from a crane, in one take. He brought on a new cast, keeping only Skarsgard, and Alexi Hawley rewrote the script to make it more conventionally scary. Some of these suggestions were accepted at the time, but the release on DVD was made as close to Welles' original idea as possible using the original footage.

Renny Harlin was then hired to direct. The DVD includes a 58-page memo written in 1958 by Welles after he had seen the producer's cut of the movie (the memo is also included as an appendix to This Is Orson Welles). Roger Ebert writes that the company thought Schrader's version was "too complex and intelligent, although those of course were not the words they used, and not scary enough." Ebert adds, "it seems scary to me ... (it) is not a conventional horror film, but does something risky and daring: It takes evil seriously."[3] (http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20050501/REVIEWS/50412001/1023). It had a limited but successful theatrical release (again by Universal International) and was subsequently made available on DVD. Morgan Creek Productions disliked Schrader's rough final edit of the film. The 1998 version was produced by Rick Schmidlin and edited by Walter Murch. He filmed a version called The Exorcist: Dominion, staring Stellan Skarsgard as a younger Father Merrin. Inevitably, Welles's film was given little publicity despite the fame of the director, the sensational subject matter, and the many stars in the cast.

Paul Schrader was hired to replace Frankenheimer. The two films even had the same cameraman: Russell Metty. John Frankenheimer was originally scheduled to direct the script by William Wisher and Caleb Carr. Frankenheimer died during the film's early casting. The A-movie, ironically, was The Female Animal, starring Hedy Lamarr, produced by the same Albert Zugsmith and directed by the same Harry Keller whom the studio had hired to direct the re-shot material in Touch of Evil. A prequel, Exorcist: The Beginning (2004) attracted controversy even before its release. The movie was literally a B-movie, released as the lower half of a double feature. A parody entitled Repossessed was released the same year, with Blair lampooning the role that made her (in)famous. The producer was Albert Zugsmith, known as the "king of the B's".

Exorcist III ignored the events of the previous sequel and presented a satisfying conclusion to the story after 15 years. Nonetheless, even as originally released it was a film of power and impact, though little commercial success. 1990's more successful The Exorcist III, written and directed by Blatty himself from his own 1983 novel Legion, the true sequel to the original novel. Universal International acquiesced with bad grace. Welles rewrote the script, but after he completed the movie, it was re-edited (and in part re-shot) by Universal International pictures and it was not until 1998 (and the fourth version) that it was released in something like the original form intended by Welles. John Boorman's poorly-received Exorcist II: The Heretic was released in 1977. Heston pretended to think that Welles was going to direct and based his acceptance of the part on that. In the United Kingdom, the movie was included in the 'Video nasty' phenomenon of the early 1980s. Although it had been released uncut for home video in 1981, when resubmitted for classification to the British Board of Film Classification after the implementation of the Video Recording Act 1984 it was refused a release and no video copies were to be sold in the UK. However, following a successful re-release in cinemas in 1998, the film was resubmitted and was passed uncut with an 18 certificate rating in 1999, signifying a relaxation of the censorship rules with relation to home video in the UK. According to Heston, Welles was originally intended to act in the film only, and Heston was highly sought for the lead.

Interestingly, the part of Regan was originally offered to troubled actress Dana Plato, whose mother refused to allow her to take it. This was among Mancini's first credited scores. The Exorcist is commonly regarded as one of the best and most effective horror films; one that balances a stellar script, gruesome effects, and outstanding performances. The score by Henry Mancini greatly heightens the atmosphere: the cacophony in the streets of loudspeakers from rival bars, a player piano in Dietrich's parlor that stands in for Quinlan's conscience, a jukebox in the gangster's bar, and the roar of crazy, anonymous Mexican rock and roll in the motel where Janet Leigh is kept prisoner. McCambride's role was originally uncredited; after Blair was nominated for her role, McCambridge initiated a lawsuit seeking redress. (Incidentally, McCambridge's voice was not processed or treated for The Exorcist, she had worked extensively in radio drama and had a flexible vocal range.). Marlene Dietrich's role was a surprise to the producers and they raised her fee so they could advertise her involvement. It was nominated for ten Academy Awards (winning two), and also won four Golden Globes. Many of the actors worked for lower wages just to make a film with Welles.

The film was a huge international hit, grossing as of 2004 $402,500,000 worldwide. Welles's old friend, Joseph Calleia, gives a moving performance as Quinlan's toady, along with other members of the Welles repertory company, Joseph Cotten, Keenan Wynn, Ray Collins (the police detective on Perry Mason), and Mercedes McCambridge as a butch biker chick. These scenes were later restored and--along with a number of new digital effects--inserted into the re-release subtitled "the version you've never seen" in 2000. Zsa Zsa Gabor was a friend of the producer. The film originally contained several key sequences from the novel, which were cut prior to release by director Friedkin, despite Blatty's protests. Welles liked what Weaver did as Chester on TV's Gunsmoke and worked closely with him on his part, which was shot on a three-day hiatus from the TV show. The imagery in question is readily apparent and easily recognizable as a simple, yet effective editing technique, designed to make the viewer ill at ease - the desired effect for a horror film, after all. Akim Tamiroff plays a border mobster with a madly wandering toupee, Dennis Weaver is a loony night man at a deserted motel, and Zsa Zsa Gabor appears briefly as the impresario of a strip club.

The Exorcist was also accused of, among many other things, manipulation of its audience through the use of subliminal imagery; a claim that is verifiably false upon a viewing of the film. The film is filled with character actors playing their roles with great menace and aplomb. The effects were so graphic that Roger Ebert writes "That it received an R rating and not the X is stupefying."[2] (http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/19731226/REVIEWS/301010310/1023). The final scene is a stately chase, with Vargas wrestling with a cranky recorder while Quinlan's partner wears a wire and gets him to confess his crimes, with the radio recorder becoming virtually a fourth character. The Exorcist contained a number of disturbing special effects, engineered by makeup legend and pioneer Dick Smith. The border setting provides Welles with an opportunity to comment on the relations between the United States and Mexico and the treatment of Mexicans by American law enforcement. The lengthy exorcism tests the priests, both physically and spiritually. Touch of Evil is rich and ripe with menace and atmosphere as Leigh is abducted by hoodlums and Heston attempts to find her, with the moody border ambiance provided by Venice, California with a two sleazy hotels, a desolate motel, and three or four broken down bars, and strip joints, as well as Dietrich's kitsch-filled parlor.

He turns to the local bishop, who appoints a second priest, Father Merrin, to perform an exorcism. In fact, Welles was injured during filming and actually needed the cane. The girl is examined by a priest, Father Damien Karras, who is convinced of the diabolical nature of the case. Quinlan's cane, an allusion to Citizen Kane, plays a major part in the film. After unsuccessful medical help, Regan's mother turns to religion. Quinlan is not on the take, but is bitter about the unsolved murder of his wife early in his career and has come to believe he can spot the guilty with his intuition, an aching in his bad leg, and he was willing to frame the guilty to make sure they get their just desserts. She undergoes a series of physical and psychological changes. Capt.

In the film, a young girl named Regan, living in Georgetown, Washington, D.C., with her mother, (a famous actress) becomes ill after playing with a Ouija board. It is not to be confused with another movie of the same title which aired on Mystery Science Theater 3000 during its later years. [1] (http://www.strangemag.com/exorcistpage1.html) Several area newspapers reported on a speech a minister gave to an amateur parapsychology society, in which he claimed to have exorcised a demon from a thirteen-year-old boy named Robbie, and that the ordeal lasted a little more than six weeks. The movie was written in two weeks by Welles based on Whit Masterson's novel Badge of Evil. Blatty based his novel on a supposedly genuine exorcism from 1949, in Cottage City, Maryland. The black-and-white film also features Charlton Heston as Mike Vargas, a Mexican narcotics agent on his honeymoon, Janet Leigh ("at her most perversely innocent" as one critic put it) as his bride, and Marlene Dietrich as Tanya, a cigar-smoking Mexican gypsy brothel owner with huge beautiful eyes. Regan's voice was dubbed by Mercedes McCambridge when possessed. It was directed by Orson Welles, who also appeared as a strangely corrupt policeman, Captain Hank Quinlan.

Cobb as Lieutenant William Kinderman and Linda Blair as Regan MacNeil. Touch of Evil (1958), was one of the last and one of the greatest examples of film noir ever made. Directed by William Friedkin and starring Max von Sydow as Father Lankaster Merrin, Ellen Burstyn as Chris MacNeil, Jason Miller as Father Damien Karras, Lee J. I probably learned more about acting from Welles than any other film director I've worked for." Charlton Heston. The Exorcist is an influential and successful 1973 horror film, adapted by William Peter Blatty from his 1971 novel of the same name. It was a remarkable experience for me, a great learning experience, one of the most valuable I've had in my whole film career. If it is not Citizen Kane, it has been listed not far behind Kane in the list of Welles' films.

"Touch of Evil, of course, was made by one of the great directors. "Come on, read my future for me." /"You haven't got any." / "What do you mean?" / "Your future is all used up." (Quinlan and Tanya). What does it matter what you say about people?...Adios!" (Tanya, as Quinlan's corpse floats face up in a muddy river at the end of the movie). "He was some kind of a man.

"A policeman's job is only easy in a police state." (Mike Vargas). "Honey, you're a mess." (Tanya to Quinlan).