.jpg)
The Exorcist (1973)
General Information
Completed On: 30 Dec, 1973
Duration: 2 hr 2 min 0 sec
Genres: Fiction
Language: English
Country: United States
Submitted By: Anna Maurice
Festival Rating
In THE EXORCIST, Linda Blair plays Regan MacNeil, the bright 12-year-old daughter of successful actress Chris (Ellen Burstyn), who can afford to raise the girl in a nurturing atmosphere with live-in cooks and nannies (Regan's absentee father is written off as self-absorbed and oblivious). The first signs of trouble include Regan playing with an Ouija board and claiming she's communicated with a ghost she calls Captain Howdy. Then the girl begins behaving abnormally, urinating in front of party guests and foretelling death for Chris' film-director boyfriend. While Regan suffers gruelling medical exams and gets progressively worse, the storyline simultaneously follows Father Damien Karras (Jason Miller), a Greek-American Catholic priest with some doubts about his religion. When medical science fails to cure the howling, obscenity-spewing, uncontrollable Regan, doctors point Chris to Father Karras, whose background in psychology includes the now-rare rite of exorcism. Karras summons another priest to help, the wiser and older Father Merrin (Max Von Sydow), and together they begin to do battle with Regan's occupier.
-
DirectorsWilliam Friedkin
-
WritersWilliam Peter Blatty
-
Film TypeFiction
-
GenresHorror,Mystery
-
Runtime2 hours 2 minutes 0 seconds
-
Completion Date30 Dec, 1973
-
Production BudgetUSD
-
Country of OriginUnited States
-
Country of Filming
-
Film LanguageEnglish
-
Shooting Format
-
Aspect Ratio
-
Film ColorColor
-
Student ProjectNo
-
First-time FilmmakerNo
Director's Biography
One of New Hollywood's most successful wunderkinder in the early '70s, William Friedkin suffered a precipitous fall from the box-office firmament in the late '70s, punctuated by the controversial cop film Cruising (1980). Nevertheless, Friedkin managed to keep his career alive, while the lasting impact of seminal horror film The Exorcist (1973) was confirmed by its enormously successful reissue in 2000. Raised in a Chicago slum, the young Friedkin fell in with a bad crowd, but his mother set him straight and Friedkin finished high school.
Beginning his career in documentaries in the early 1960s, he is perhaps best known for directing the action thriller film The French Connection (1971) and the supernatural horror film The Exorcist (1973), the former of which won five Academy Awards, including Best Picture, Best Adapted Screenplay and Best Director. The latter also earned him a nomination for the Academy Award for Best Director.
His other films include the pioneering queer drama The Boys in the Band (1970), the suspense thriller Sorcerer (1977), the controversial crime film Cruising (1980), the action-thriller To Live and Die in L.A. (1985), the psychological horror film Bug (2006), and the dark comedy Killer Joe (2011).
