When I was in 4th or 5th grade, I watched the 1973 The Exorcist with my best friend. No one but us was home, and we turned the lights off to create a scary mood. It worked. After watching the movie, with plenty of screams throughout, I couldn't even ride my bike home. I couldn't lie in my bed without fear that it would start shaking. I was scared to look at stairs, thinking of vomiting blood. I couldn't even eat my favorite split pea soup because that's what the vomit in one of the scenes reminded me of. (Even trying to find a clip of the movie now is making me nauseous and cover my eyes.) This movie put the fear into my ten-year-old mind that I'd be possessed by a demon. I had grown up in a semi-religious home; we weren’t avid churchgoers but I always attended Vacation Bible School and believed in Christianity. Because of this “lukewarm religion,” I think the movie affected me even more. I believed enough in God to hope that this evil thing could not happen to me, but I didn’t have a regular pastor to tell me if the movie was inaccurate to the teachings of the Bible. My non-believing friend was, although scared at the time we watched the movie, safe from all the worrying my mind did for the next few months.
As far as Parker’s article goes, I believe it’s irrelevant to my experience. The article talks about remakes and times of popularity. Though the film was made in 1973 and could be considered a response to the Vietnam War, I didn’t view it when it came out, and it hadn’t gained any more popularity at the time I did view it. In addition, I had no desire to see the sequels to the film. Also, I believe that this film is on a different level than slasher films. It’s more psychological and spiritual than a psycho with a knife; The Exorcist plays on your religious beliefs and fears of an invader in your body. The shots in this movie that set the tone are not necessarily the barren streets as Parker describes in Halloween; the scenes that disturbed me the most were when the girl’s body was distorted. My choice to watch The Exorcist wasn’t based on the conflict of the time of even that “everyone was watching it” at that time period. Relevance could be found in the article when Parker talked about torture. The girl in the exorcist was very much tortured, and that stuck with me, hoping that I would never be tortured in any similar way. Also, the fact that the demon didn’t necessarily die, but was only expelled from the girl’s body, makes it possible to make many sequels. These factors seem to hold true for many horror movies, just not my experience of this particular one.
I also cannot think of a connection to Clover's ideas on why teens are attracted to this type of movie. The monster isn't necessarily a man, and the heroine isn't a sexy, voluptuous young woman. Teens cannot identify with either character, but I suppose boyfriends could "protect" girlfriends, although this would never work for me! I refuse to ever watch this movie again!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o-4f_NMUxcY
I apologize that it isn't embedded into the post, but for some reason this particular video has embedding disabled, and this is the scene that really stuck with me.
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I had always wanted to see the Exorcist when I was young, but I never really had the chance. When I finally did see it I was 16 and I found it profoundly dull. Some parts of it are actually funny actually, such as when she vomits all over the priest.
ReplyDeleteWhat was far more terrifying was the similar movie release in 2003, "The Exorcism of Emily Rose". That film scarred the pants of off me.