The Exorcist - appreciation thread

[oakmanc234]

bonanzataz wrote: fuck the prequel. fuck it so far up it's stupid fucking ass that it chokes on itself. they couldn't just let it die and let the world pretend that 2 and 3 didn't happen? i have not seen 2 and 3 and i don't plan to, and i don't plan on seeing this one.

I meant that the upcoming prequel has a lot to live up to. A shit load. I didn't mean it's got a lot going for it (I wish I could say that). I really couldn't care less about it, especially when Liam Neeson and Ryan Phillippe were out of the picture. There is really nothing enticing about the flick other than the name Paul Schrader. And why the fuck are they calling it 'Exorcist IV:The Beginning'?! Why would they put it with any relation to those two disaster follow-ups?! ('Exorcist II' gets my vote for the worst sequel in existence).

[Cecil]

exorcist III is okay

you should see that one.

[oakmanc234]

I saw it a while ago. Pretty forgettable but a masterpiece compared to part 2.

[filmcritic]

Pretty forgettable??? It's a masterpiece no matter what you compare it to.

[Alethia]

the upcoming prequel has a lot on its shoulders.

fuck the prequel. fuck it so far up it's stupid fucking ass that it chokes on itself. they couldn't just let it die and let the world pretend that 2 and 3 didn't happen? i have not seen 2 and 3 and i don't plan to, and i don't plan on seeing this one.

i'll see it just for the sake of paul shcrader's name being atached to it

[modage]

How about now?

[bonanzataz]

bonanzataz wrote: fuck the prequel. fuck it so far up it's stupid fucking ass that it chokes on itself. they couldn't just let it die and let the world pretend that 2 and 3 didn't happen? i have not seen 2 and 3 and i don't plan to, and i don't plan on seeing this one.

I meant that the upcoming prequel has a lot to live up to. A shit load. I didn't mean it's got a lot going for it (I wish I could say that). I really couldn't care less about it, especially when Liam Neeson and Ryan Phillippe were out of the picture. There is really nothing enticing about the flick other than the name Paul Schrader. And why the fuck are they calling it 'Exorcist IV:The Beginning'?! Why would they put it with any relation to those two disaster follow-ups?! ('Exorcist II' gets my vote for the worst sequel in existence).

i wasn't implying that you thought it'd be good. i just wanted to give people a frame of reference as to why i was bringing up the prequel...


and who the fuck is paul schrader? the guy from NYPD blue?

[Ghostboy]

Writer of Taxi Driver, Raging Bull, Last Temptation Of Christ, etc., director of Affliction, Autofocus, Mishima, Hardcore, American Gigolo, etc.

[bonanzataz]

oh, THAT guy. i love taxi driver, but i hate auto focus with a burning passion. i've never seen any of his other films, so i wouldn't know.

[Ghostboy]

That Haunted Boy website was fascinating.

My whole family is Roman Catholic, and my great uncle was a priest and missionary who (purportedly) performed a few exorcisms. I grew up with a really open mind to the whole thing, and so the whole concept was always enough to scare me, not to mention the movie (I even got scared reading about it, before I even saw it).

So anyway, I'm closer to being agnostic now, and I'm pretty skeptical about possessions and such...but here's a good story. Two years ago, a friend of mine (one of the actors from my first film) was at a party where this kid supposedly got posessed. Apparently he'd been messing around with a ouija board a few weeks before, doing weird stuff with it. Anyway. I didn't believe it, ESPECIALLY when I heard that everyone at the party was tripping on ex, including the posessee. But the clincher was that someone was videotaping the party,  and so my friend showed it to me, and it freaked me out.

It started out with just normal party activity, everyone drinking and acting goofy, and then whoever was filming gradually started paying attention to one of their friends who was acting really weird. He was sitting in the middle of the room and playing the guitar and babbling in some gibberish that, gradually, started sounding like another language. He was talking in a really weird voice -- nothing inhuman, but just creepy. He kept saying the same things over and over again, in whatever language he was speaking. Then he started contorting his neck into what looked like really painful positions. Every now and then he'd snap out of it and talk in a normal voice and ask what was going on, sounding genuinely terrified, and then he'd start contorting again and the voice would come back.

So anyway, it goes on like this for a while, and it's really creepy but nothing TOO out of the ordinary, especially since he was tripping. But then he starts growling at the camera, and the pitch of his voice was just waaayyy too low. Very inhuman. And it was clear that the tape hadn't been altered -- no sound effects or anything -- it would take some really professional sound work to get it to sound as natural as it did, and these kids defintiely weren't pros. After that, someone turned the light on in the room and the guy starts screaming and yelling at the person in the other language, and at that point the footage ended.

I'm still not quite sure what to think about it. My mind's been more open about stuff like that ever since I saw it, though.

So anyway, that's my exorcist-related story. Geez, I think this is my longest post ever.

[filmcritic]

That's some scary stuff.

[Alethia]

How about now?

heh, no i'd see that just for reese

[Cecil]

ghostboy, anyway we can see that footage? or is it long gone?

[Alethia]

yeah, can i see it please

[Ghostboy]

I'll see if I can manage to retrieve it. I just talked to that actor for the first time in a year or so last week, I'm sure he still knows the person who shot it. We originally watched it in on the hi8 video tape it was shot on, with the camera just plugged into my VCR, and I've kicked myself consistently for not making a copy back then. Of course, the REAL clincher to the story is that I don't have a copy, isn't it? Ain't that always the way.

EDIT: I just noticed that this is my nine hundred and ninety ninth post. This is a very appropriate thread for that....just flip it over and you get 666!