Brenda's Review of The Exorcist 1973

Transcript

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Hi there, I'm Brenda. Today we are going to be reviewing The Exorcist from 1973. It's one of my favorite all-time movies, even though I had a little quirk with this one before I get into the review. I was actually scared to watch this one by myself until today. I am 55 years old and it took me this long to watch it alone. I think I was so young when I watched it the first time, and may have mentioned this on the Let's Wine with Brendan Stacy podcast. I was home with the chicken pox in the fourth grade, and my mother had it on, edited for TV. She was naive, had never watched the movie herself. She decided to go talk to my grandmother on the phone in the kitchen, landline, so she couldn't walk freely through the house. She left me alone in the living room with my chicken noodle soup on a TV tray watching this movie, and I could not look away. But as the movie progressed and I had to use the restroom, I do remember screaming for her to turn on the hall light so I could go to the bathroom by myself. And it's just one of those movies that stuck with me all this time. I've probably watched it a hundred times over the years, and it was always with someone. So it was very hard for me to sit down and watch it by myself. On another note, my youngest daughter watched it when she was a teenager with me. I was so excited to have her watch it, and I don't think she was impressed. I get that movies have changed over time, but damn it, I just feel like she should love it as much as I do. She is my horror movie buddy, and I love her to pieces, but I just don't think she got the same fear out of it that I did. This movie was based on a book. I'm gonna try my hardest to stay away from the book. It was written in 1971 by William Peter Blatty. I found the book to actually be scarier than the movie, so it is worth read. This movie highly became on my radar again when I read that Mike Flanagan is going to be releasing another Exorcist in March of 2027. He is listed as the writer, director, and producer, and it is supposed to star Scarlett Johansson, Lawrence Fishburne, and Diane Lane. If I had my way, I'd be sitting around with a wine glass in my hand until 2027, just waiting for that movie. I'm more excited than ever because I saw Linda Blair and Ellen Burston's name in the cast list. They are both from the 1973 version. They play mother and daughter staying in Georgetown. As much as I love this movie, it does not get a wine glass for the environment. The opening scene's actually northern Iraq, I think. It's all desert. I don't like the whole sand thing. Does not thrill me at all. And the home that they are living in has a lot of white walls going on. So I don't feel that the environment is what I look for in that type of movie. Luckily, the acting and the demonic presence kind of overshadow that, so you don't think about it. The only thing that really stands out being eerie to me are those moments waiting for Regan's bedroom door to open. Regan is the 12-year-old girl played by Linda Blair who is possessed by Pazuzu. And since I have daughters, it's really easy to feel for this mom. You start thinking, what would you do in this situation? I'll give it two wine glasses on that, just being a single mom. And after what that poor woman went through, she needs more than two glasses of wine. Evil ass Pazuzu gets his own glass of wine. That is the demon that possesses Reagan, played by Linda Blair. And if you haven't watched the movie, I know you've heard some of the things that go on in the movie. When the movie first came out, they were saying that people were getting sick in the aisles. Um I saw a documentary that mentioned that it wasn't because of the possession, which actually has total head rotation and spitting pea soup at a priest, but people in the aisles were actually upset over a medical procedure to check Reagan's brain for lesions. I can look at Regan all day long while she's possessed. I think it's the voice that really upsets me. The voice of the demon was played by Mercedes McCambridge, and I heard that she smoked an awful lot of cigarettes and drank a lot of whiskey to get her voice to sound the way it did. Another one of my favorite actors in the movie is Max Von Sido. He went on to play Leland Gaunt in Needful Things. But in this movie, back in 1973, he was only 44 years old, so they had to age him with makeup. He was in his 60s when he went on to be in Needful Things, and I feel that whoever did the makeup on him back then, they could predict what he was gonna look like as he aged. They did a really, really good job with him because he played Father Marin, who was supposed to be 80 years old. His character showed up in a couple prequels. The one I watched today was just right at two hours long, and I watched the one that had all of the deleted scenes taken out, but then went and watched a documentary after that had all the deleted scenes. If you've never watched this movie, I would go ahead and watch the long version with the scenes in it. You can't miss the spiderwalk. There is a video on YouTube you can search that has a side-by-side comparison of the original cut from 1973 and also the extended cut from 2000. I'm just gonna go ahead and give this one six glasses of wine because it deserves it. I found it to be very entertaining from beginning to end, but I'm also at the age now where I'm looking in the background at everything to try to see everything that I missed the first time around. If you've never watched this movie before, give it a watch. Watch it with a friend. If you have seen it, give it a rewatch, especially if you haven't watched it in a long time. Get ready for Mike Flanagan's Exorcist. If you don't know who he is, he's affiliated with Dr. Sleep, Hush, Oculus, Haunting on Hill House. He's definitely made a name for himself, and so I'm looking forward to the 2027 version. So six glasses of wine. This is my best review yet. Um, the next one is gonna be the 2005 Amityville Horror with Ryan Reynolds and Melissa George. That should be out next week. And just keep in mind that Thorzine and Redolin are not gonna cure a demonic possession. Until next time, bye.