The Exorcist (1973 (including Extended Director’s Cut)/Warner Blu-ray)
Picture:
B+ Sound: B Extras: B+ Film: B+
The
Horror genre has become a wasteland of mostly bad B films (the B begin very
generous) and some A product that usually is as bad as bad B product in recent
years as it has become glutted beyond anything anyone could have imagined. To make a film that stands out and stands the
test of time, you have to make a film that suspends disbelief, is effective
throughout, well made, consistent and if it has good acting, that helps
too. Hitchcock’s Psycho (1960) changed filmmaking forever, then Polanski’s Rosemary’s Baby and Romero’s Night Of The Living Dead both arrived
in 1968 and the last golden era of Horror began.
One split
that some writes have noted is that you had you low-budget exploitation films
and some of them (Texas Chain Saw
Massacre) became classics, then there were the big screen Hollywood studio
films (The Omen, both of which the
late Robin Wood compared in his priceless book Hollywood From Vietnam To Reagan… And Beyond) that were A product
and sometimes hits that worked. The
horror/monster in the low-budget films were from America,
while the Hollywood product had the menace
comes from overseas. William Friedkin’s
film of William Peter Blatty’s novel The
Exorcist (1973) follows the A-level Hollywood route, but why has it endured
and stood out as one of the greatest Horror films Hollywood made in the sound
era, color film era and remains one of the most imitated (almost always
uselessly) films of all time?
For
starters, it is written as a drama, not a formula horror flick, so it is
already several steps ahead of its usually shallow imitators and other wannabes
that also happens to be a world of mature, grown adults. That is lacking in almost every recent horror
film of late. Also, it is not a comedy,
though some jokes come through in he script, they work and make sense in the
context of the film. The characters are
also well-developed; something the genre rarely has time for. That alone makes all this a very well made
film, but then, the terror begins.
At first,
we meet the hard working, very likable Chris MacNeil (the great Ellen Burstyn)
who is a liberated woman, very successful in the filmmaking (nod, wink)
business and a good woman all around.
She has a healthy daughter in Regan (Linda Blair) she is doing her best
to raise, but it is not always easy and it is about to get much tougher. At first, Regan is not well, but then, it is
apparent that something is very wrong, beyond her, beyond anyone’s
understanding and beyond anything any one has experienced before. She is not just sick or ill or psychotic, but
truly is possessed by a Satanic force, maybe Satan himself.
This is
based on Catholic ideas and teachings, which rarely surface in the genre
outside of crosses against vampires, but is delivered in such a full-fledged
way that audiences had never seen anything like it before and the particular
ways the script (Blatty wrote the screenplay from his own book) slowly takes
apart the idea of the happy family, deals with the sexual politics of feminism,
liberalism and is not just some reactionary formula film the genre would
produce en masse by the 1980s. It is
smart, intense and as it moves forward, it just builds up and builds up. I am impressed how well the film endures all
these years later and how many errors (mostly sloppy) recent imitators have
been.
Everyone
is so good in the film, including Jason Miller as the haunted priest, Lee J.
Cobb as the authority figure, Blair (even with Mercedes McCambridge, the great
big screen movie star who was also a brilliant voice on radio dramas for
decades, as the voice of the demon) does well here, Jack MacGowran (Dance Of the Vampires, Doctor Zhivago, Lord Jim, Young Cassidy,
et al in his last role) and Ingmar Bergman veteran Max Von Sydow as the title
character, Father Merrin. The chemistry
is amazing and dense making the dark situations seem that much darker and the
film actually juggles more than one kind of the return of the repressed that
resonates long after it first became a huge blockbuster.
Some have noted that some of its success was in the middle of the Vietnam fiasco,
but like the best films of the time, the film far exceeds that context and
remains a classic that often exceeds its genre.
It is not reactionary horror and terror, but the kind that slowly works
on the audience and Director Friedkin was at the early peak of his filmmaking
powers. The result is a classic that in
some ways, the audience still has not caught up with 37+ years. All you have to know is that once it starts,
it is a pure cinematic experience that just gets better and better as you
watch, like all classics. The Exorcist will continue to be so for
a very, very long tome to come, especially when Warner Bros. has given it such
deluxe treatment here.
The 1080p
1.85 X 1 digital High Definition image is amazing in both the Extended
Director’s Cut that originally arrived in 2000 and the Original Theatrical
Version from 1973. Director of Photography
Owen Roizman (who had lensed Friedkin’s French
Connection and other great films like Network,
the original Stepford Wives, the
original Taking Of Pelham One Two Three
and Play It Again, Sam) gave the
film a uniquely dark look like no other Horror film had ever delivered before
and is so distinct that the imitators have never come close. He and Friedkin color-timed both cuts and
they easily are the best versions of the film I have ever seen. Originally released in prints from the
distinct MetroColor labs, these men have gone back and fixed the film frame by
frame in such a meticulous way that the brand-new look of the print makes the
suspense all that much richer.
It is
amazing how great this looks ands except for some grain typical of some of the
stock so the time, you would think some reshoots were done somewhere here, but
they were not. This looks like a print
that could have just arrived at a big screen, single screen theater of the
time, the kind that made total sense to do a 70mm blow-up of in 1979 and one
that even looks like a lost print, stored in a vault that somehow stayed in
mint condition. This sets another high
standard for film restoration and preservation, especially for films from the
1970s, which are too often written off as poor when that simply was not the
case.
The
DTS-HD MA (Master Audio) lossless mixes are amazing upgrades (6.1 on the
Extended Cut, 5.1 on the Original Version), cleaned up from past remasters and
now free of some of the screeching, sometimes ear-piercing distortion on past
DVD editions. Originally, the film was
issued in monophonic sound, but the 1979 version was in 70mm 6-track magnetic
stripe sound (think 4.0 or 4.1, with sound coming especially form the screen)
then the 2000 version offered a digital 5.1 mix in all three theatrical formats
(DTS, SDDS, Dolby). This new mix offers
audio detail, clarity and dynamic range none of the previous versions did,
including the Steve Boeddeker score on the 2000 version and the classic Mike
Oldfield hit Tubular Bells which launched
Virgin Records with a big hit.
Audiophiles know the whole Tubular
Bells album was issued years ago in the underrated Super Audio CD format
(with multi-channel sound as the original album was even available as a
quadraphonic release and is considered one of the best of the time) so the film
has always had a distinct character in its sound and that comes through very
well here.
Extras
include the booklet built inside the Blu-ray DigiBook itself and a slip of
paper inside that book with Freidkin explaining personal thoughts on the
film. The Blu-ray itself offers three
feature length audio commentary tracks; two by Friedkin (one for each cut of
the film, one by Blatty on the 1973 cut, plus a new three-part documentary on
the Extended Version that includes Raising
Hell: Filming The Exorcist, The
Exorcist Locations: Georgetown Then & Now and Faces Of Evil: The Different Versions Of The Exorcist. The Theatrical Version adds an introduction
by Friedkin, the Original Ending, feature-length 1998 documentary The Fear Of God: The Making Of The Exorcist
and an Interview Gallery covering the
topics: The Original Cut, The Final Reckoning and Stairway To Heaven. I was hoping for an additional set of trailers,
TV Spots, Radio Spots and more stills, but that is not here, though some have
been on previous DVDs, but that is my only complaint.
You can
also go to the iTunes site for downloads on the film at this link:
http://bit.ly/WBDD_EXORCIST
-
Nicholas Sheffo
