by Maria
The summer before I started the sixth grade, my parents spent a week visiting my aunt in Florida. They had cable! My parents thought cable had a lot of racy TV, which wasn’t a good thing to have in a household with young kids. Turns out they were right.
Whenever the grownups left us unsupervised, we snuck over to turn on HBO. Although several years had passed since it had been in theaters, The Exorcist was on rotation on HBO that summer. Probably the greatest shock of the film, for anyone unfamiliar, is the use of repeated blasphemous obscenities - and at a couple of priests, no less.
When this movie first came to theaters in 1973, showings were sold out all over the country. Audiences could barely stomach the film, with some having to step out into the lobby or leaving the cinema entirely because it was considered too graphic. No one had ever seen horror so realistic and so violent.
Many of the famous scenes are also the same ones that left an imprint on a young girl who didn’t know what sex was, much less that crucifixes could be used like that.
In one famous scene, the head-spinning done by the child is disturbing because it’s done slowly, so that the audience doesn't perhaps note it for a few seconds.
In one famous scene, the head-spinning done by the child is disturbing because it’s done slowly, so that the audience doesn't perhaps note it for a few seconds.
Now that I’m a mom, I’m familiar with real-life projectile vomit, but as a ten-year-old kid watching a movie character who’s about my own age, this was the most disgusting thing I’d ever witnessed.
Whenever I see this movie on cable, I’ll always stop and watch for at least a few minutes. It doesn't scare me the way it did the first time, but the story of a child being possessed by evil, the idea that a mother and other adults might not have the power to help that child, is still deeply unsettling.
