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What compels us to visit The Exorcist?

© Kathy Shaidle

My First Communion coincided with the Watergate hearings.

At least that's how I remember it, barely: The Flintstones pre-empted for almost forever, supplanted by somber men in dark suits muttering about "bugs." Why bother fitting me for this stupid frilly dress, I wondered, if giant insects had indeed escaped from the White House and were headed this way? Every night, the news got creepier. Charles Manson, Patty Hearst, and worse: Chowchilla-kids buried alive in their hijacked bus.

Then The Exorcist opened-December 26, 1973-breaking box-office records, and sparking outbreaks of couvade-like sympathy vomiting by audience members.

How not-that-surprising. The Seventies were America's hangover of the century-a decade-long, morning-after mourning of the innocence it had wasted the entire Sixties trying frantically to lose. The Exorcist provided a socially sanctioned outlet for pent-up frustration as high as inflation.

Not old enough to see it when it first came out, I finally lost my Exorcist virginity in my early twenties. Frankly, it just wasn't that scary, not like Silence of the Lambs, or Night of the Living Dead.

But all the recent hype wore me down: I went to see a newly-struck print of The Exorcist last weekend. Would it be more frightening now?

Nope. The scariest part is still the women's Herb-Tarlick-in-drag wardrobe. But so? The Exorcist isn't even supposed to be a horror film. Jesuit-educated author William Peter Blatty calls his original novel "a nice little religious book."

Which helps explain why, instead of scaring me, The Exorcist made me cry.

When the movie first came out, the Vatican II reforms were almost ten years old. The Catholic Church had thrown out the Infant Jesus of Prague with the holy water, trashing centuries of "superstitious" bells & smells overnight. "Hey kids, eat burgers on Fridays! Let's split this medieval pop stand and blast into the twenty-first century!"

All too much, too soon (and way too "Protestant") for millions of Catholics who declined to board Spaceship Folk Mass. So Hollywood stepped in and did what it does best: giving the people what they want.

The Exorcist provides all the crucifixes, dog collars and cassocks you can stand. THRILL to the powerful poetry of an ancient religious rite (that Vatican II tried to get rid of)! SEE a grown man praying the rosary!

And the goosebumps don't stop there. One critic called The Exorcist, not so much a horror film as a Western. Sure enough: when those two priests gravely mount the stairs to Regan's haunted bedroom, I can almost hear a banjo plucking "Do not forsake me, O my darlin' ..." Puts a lump in my throat and a tear in my eye.

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