10 Reasons The Exorcist is Still The Greatest Horror Film Ever Made

10 Reasons The Exorcist is Still The Greatest Horror Film Ever Made

By: The Tall Man 

Last year, after 50 years atop the list, Citizen Kane was dethroned on the British Film Institute’s list of greatest movies by Vertigo. Debates and frowny faces followed, but I think the real reason Kane got bumped is that a new generation of film buffs just got sick of the previous generation’s #1 pick.

They wanted their own #1, so Orson Welles’ fat dead ass was replaced by Hitchcock’s. Is Vertigo a better movie than Citizen Kane? No. Not even close, really. But the British masses have spoken, and Vertigo is the new champ.

Similar winds of change are nagging at The Exorcist after 40 years as the consensus Best Horror Film Ever. It has been too long at the top. It’s too entrenched. It isn’t scary any more. It’s overrated. It’s boring. It’s funny. It’s from our parents’ generation, so it can’t be that great. I’ve heard every dumb reason why.

Look, classics like Halloween, Psycho and Dawn of the Dead have a legitimate claim as #1. They’re all great, but with a 40th anniversary blu-ray out this month, here’s ten reasons why The Exorcist still reigns supreme:

1. It’s Dead Serious: Whatever humor there is in The Exorcist is purely unintentional and probably stems from your drunk buddies giggling at the wrong moments. Nothing about this film is funny or lighthearted, and that sense of dread seems to suck all hope and optimism out of the characters by the end, which only heightens the horror. Go somewhere else for laughs, The Exorcist isn’t here for your amusement.

2. It’s Factual: Long before every supernatural-themed horror movie played the ‘true story’ card, William Peter Blatty was inspired by the real-life exorcism of a 14-year-old boy in 1949 which Blatty heard about while a student at Georgetown. The story made the front page of The Washington Post.

3.It’s Very Religious: Despite its notorious reputation, The Exorcist is actually one of the most religious mainstream films ever made. You cannot deal with the dark without embracing the light, and the film brilliantly makes you question and re-evaluate your own faith (as Damien Karras does throughout the story) while your brain processes some horrific stuff. You can keep your Passion of The Christ, this is the movie that likely sent millions to church the day after it opened.

4.William Friedkin Nailed It: Friedkin had just won the Oscar for The French Connection and surprised most everyone by doing a horror film as a follow-up. Remember, this was the early ‘70s, and horror had few prestige films to offer. He changed that, treating the material with respect and letting the audience know they weren’t watching the usual Saturday afternoon thriller. He changed an entire genre and gave big name directors the incentive to tackle horror without feeling it was beneath them. Richard Donner, Stanley Kubrick and some kid named Spielberg certainly took notice.

5. It Becomes a Different Movie: When you first watch The Exorcist as a kid or early teen, you’re overwhelmed by the scares and visual effects. As an adult, you view it differently, and it somehow becomes more horrifying. If you’re a parent, few things are more agonizing than watching something attack and overtake your child. It’s a helpless feeling, and The Exorcist plays this card masterfully – for some, the scene where the words ‘Help Me’ appear on Regan’s stomach is freaky. For parents, it conjures a primal dread which makes this scene so much more painful. Your child is suffering and there’s nothing you can do. This is the entire dynamic between Regan and her mother throughout the movie, and one of many reasons the film had such a harrowing effect on its audience.

6. Dick Smith’s make-up: Yes, he won the Oscar and every make-up artist in the world regards this film as their Mona Lisa. But even 40 years later, what Smith did here is incredible. The mere sight of Linda Blair’s distorted face can fuel nightmares, and the first time I saw the film I saw that creepy bitch in my closet for weeks. He could have gone many ways with the make-up, to make Blair look more devilish or sinister (re: the book cover), but to illustrate the evil inside her he covered her in open sores and grotesque features, completely eradicating the 12-year-old girl we first met. But his most brilliant effect was turning the 44-year-old Max Von Sydow into a 74-year-old priest. To this day I think, “Max hasn’t aged a day since The Exorcist!”

7.This Scene: This fucking scene. When you dissect it, it’s still the most jarring 60 seconds in horror history. After a rather serene moment, Ellen Burstyn hears complete chaos erupting in her daughter’s room. There she finds crap flying around and Regan, her face covered in blood, impaling her crotch with a crucifix. After knocking her across the room, a chair slams the door shut and Burstyn turns to see Regan do the impossible – her head crank nearly 90 degrees backwards while speaking in the voice of Burstyn’s dead friend. This is the moment early audiences lost their shit at.

8.Opening Day: Did we mention this movie opened on Boxing Day, 1973? Most horror films would open near Halloween or summer to catch the drive-in crowd, but Warner Bros. put this bad boy in theatres during the holiest time of the year. A ballsy move that paid off with massive line-ups for weeks. Adjusted for inflation, The Exorcist is still among the 10 biggest films of all time.

9.Weird Shit Happened on Set: The Omen may be the king of creepy mishaps during filming, but The Exorcist had its fair share as well, as told by Friedkin in the documentary Fear of God: The Making of The Exorcist (included with the blu-ray). Some of the cast died before the film was released. A fire wiped out the set. Von Sydow’s brother died during filming and Jason Miller’s son was nearly killed. A priest was called to the set to bless it. It was a tense shoot, and that sense of unease comes through in every frame.

10. ‘Your Mother Sucks Cocks in Hell!’: It can’t be stressed enough how extreme The Exorcist must have seemed to those first paying customers, the people who didn’t know what was coming. By all accounts, the film should have gotten an X rating, but it dodged that bullet and dropped some of the most intense, mindblowing things an audience had ever seen or heard in a theatre up to that point. After The Exorcist, no horror movie could shock or surprise an audience quite so much – the landscape changed. Gore and graphic content was to be expected, but for those first viewers, it was all new and unrelenting. Horror movies can still be scary, but none will ever have the effect on its audience The Exorcist did.

So, a round of pea soup for everyone: The Exorcist is 40, freaky, and still the greatest horror film ever made.