The Exorcist (1973)

“I'm the Devil. Now kindly undo these straps.” — Demon

The Exorcist was not your average blockbuster film. Called “the greatest horror film of all time” by many, it has remained unparalleled in terms of its initial reception, its cultural impact and its subsequent adoption into the American film canon. With a worldwide gross of over $440 million, countless magazine covers and Evangelist preacher Billy Graham proclaiming “the Devil is in every frame,” it was a phenomenon. On its release Variety called the film “pure cinematic terror” and the New York Daily News proclaimed it “a brilliantly successful horror movie.” Pauline Kael, writing for the New Yorker, grudgingly admitted that, “The Exorcist is too ugly a phenomenon to take lightly.”

Based on William Peter Blatty’s book of the same name, The Exorcist was inspired by an account of a real-life exorcism Blatty had heard of while attending Georgetown University in 1949. It would take him another two decades to write and publish the book but, remembering the incident which inspired it, he decided to use Georgetown, Washington as a setting for the screenplay.

Both the book and the film follow elderly Jesuit priest Father Merrin (Max Von Sydow) who, while on an archaeological dig in Iraq, uncovers an ancient amulet.…

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