Last year was the fiftieth anniversary of the classic horror film “The Exorcist,” written by William Peter Blatty and directed by William Friedkin. The movie was released on December 26th, 1973, in theaters across the United States, Canada, and Europe. It was Boxing Day, the day after Christmas. Though there was enough publicity and expectations about the movie before its release, no one expected or imagined the unbelievable effect the movie would have on the viewers. Within days of its release, the movie had already become a cult classic. Those who braved through the two hours and one minute of the film knew that they had witnessed a seismic shift in film history. The Horror genre had been redefined. People staggered out of movie halls, yelling in fear, hysterical, and unable to process what they had seen. Dozens fainted in the corridors and aisles and carried away in ambulances to nearby hospitals. Many stomped out in indignation at the blasphemy of the theme, images, and language. Theater management stationed Nurses and doctors at the gates of the auditoriums to attend to people who came out of the hall with symptoms of a nervous breakdown. The producers generously arranged for coffee and snacks to the snaking lines of interminable crowds waiting to get a ticket. In an age when word of mouth was the only social media available, The Exorcist was passed around as a must-see movie.
The metamorphosis of a beautiful, innocent young girl in her early teens into a disheveled, disgusting, and demonically possessed body caught the morbid fancy of people. Never before in movies was evil portrayed in such a vicious and horrifying intensity, and the audience reacted viscerally to the appalling images that slowly gathered into a terrifying momentum frame after frame in the intelligently crafted movie. Despite the warnings about the content of the film, contrary to all expectations, more people – not less – flocked to theaters in groups, braving the stiff winter of Washington and New York, sleeping on pavements, and in many instances, earnestly pleading with theater authorities to let them in. The city police had to be mobilized to control the crowds. Very few films in the annals of cinema have moved audiences the way The Exorcist did and continue to do so even today. William Peter Blatty had written many works in his career, but posterity will remember him mainly for Exorcist. In the sequence of fantastic tales of the abnormal and the supernatural like Mary Shelley’s “Frankenstein” and Bram Stoker’s “Dracula” Robert Louis Stevenson’s “Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde,” and Stephen Kings “The Shining,” Blatty’s The Exorcist” was a genre-bending work of fiction. How it came about is a story of luck, serendipity, and a confluence of several factors.
Blatty was born to Lebanese immigrant parents. He grew up in New York, mostly in poverty. His father left the family when he was a child, and his mother struggled hard, performing menial jobs (even begging on the streets at times) to ensure that Blatty got a good education. Thankfully for her, the boy was preternaturally bright, with deep green-blue eyes, a sculptured face, and a charismatic personality – traits that he would carry with him throughout his life. He was an exceptional student at school, and when it was time to join college, George Town University offered him the only scholarship they gave out annually to Blatty based on his exceptional performance in a seven-hour grueling exam. He completed his Bachelors and Masters in English literature. However, it was not his proficiency in English that came to his aid in choosing a career; it was Arabic, his mother tongue, that got him his first job. He became an Arabic translator for USAID and was posted to Beirut, Baghdad, and Iraq – places and experiences that would leave a lasting impact on him.
In Blatty’s witty 1960 semi-autobiographical book, Which Way to Mecca, Jack?, he recounts his experiences in the Middle East, especially the feeling of alienation of a minority community in a place where they are constantly threatened and mistrusted. The devout catholic that Blatty was, he deeply felt and tried to internalize the undercurrent of religious tension that existed in a majority Muslim world— impressions that would find enough resonance when he wrote about Good and Evil in The Exorcist. The iconic symbolism of Father Merrin, an old and tired Jesuit priest standing face-to-face across a yawning precipice, against the eagle-faced image of Pazzuzu, the demon of the winds, standing on taloned legs, with menacing eyes, abnormally long phallus, and outstretched arms – is Blatty’s conception of God and the devil and his view of the stark divide between the forces of faith and non-belief. The image of a seasoned Christian priest, weary of the body but firm of spirit and faith, stirred by a premonition of a manifestation of evil in someone somewhere, challenges the devil himself, an ancient enemy ( as Blatty calls it), a harbinger of sickness, trauma, and death to all he touches. The book and the movie will play out this drama.
When “The Exorcist” was published in 1971, it would be William Peter Blatty’s fifth book. His previous works were comedies and satires known for their fluid writing and intelligence. Blatty had a vague idea of writing a book, a novel, about possession and exorcism even during his student days at George Town in the 1950s, when one of his professors had talked about the case of a young boy in a nearby community who was supposedly possessed and subsequently exorcised. Newspapers at that time also reported the event in some detail. Blatty was deeply intrigued by the story, and in his deeply catholically trained mind, the idea of a possession had left a strong impression. He knew there was a story there to be told. A great work of art, as they say, is often an outcome of one’s distilled life experiences, and sometimes, an idea could take years or decades before it finds vent. That was the case with “The Exorcist”.
After graduating, Blatty found his writing voice elsewhere, in comedies. During the sixties, he moved west to Hollywood and wrote scripts for Hollywood movies. He was successful but couldn’t continue writing comedies for long. The seventies heralded an age of pessimism. With the looming Vietnam War, the cult of Charles Manson and his fanatical proteges, whose acts shocked the nation, and the exacerbating Middle Eastern oil crisis leading to steady inflation, there was discontent in the air. The euphoria that marked the sixties wasn’t the case anymore. It was during such a time that Blatty, with not enough work on his hands, decided to work on the novel that had remained dormant in his mind for so many years. He pulled out his notes on the exorcism that had caught his attention twenty years ago. He rented a secluded cottage in Encino, California, to work on the novel, and within six months, he had a finished draft in his hands.
He couldn’t find a publisher. No one wanted to touch the book. After many rejections, he eventually found a publisher in Bantam House, whose editor he serendipitously met during a party. The advance of $75,000 from Bantam saved Blatty from bankruptcy. That was not the end of his woes or his luck. With The Exorcist now in print and bookstores, no one bought them. The subject didn’t quite fit the reading tastes of the public. Sales were dismal. When Blatty embarked on book promotion tours, bookstore owners had the sorry task of requesting Blatty not to sign copies in-store because if he did, they wouldn’t be able to return them to the publishers in case the books didn’t sell. This kind of reception is every writer’s nightmare. No wonder Blatty was dejected, and so was his publisher.
Once again, Blatty had an incredible stroke of luck, serendipity, or fortune – call it what you may – that changed the course of the book’s history. In the seventies, one of the most popular talk shows was the one hosted by the gentle, erudite, and honey-voiced host – Dick Cavett. To be a guest on Dick Cavett shows meant publicity at a scale one cannot imagine. During the period when Blatty was wondering where to go after the debacle of his book release, he pre-auditioned for the Dick Cavett show, not so much for his recent novel, but on the strength of his previous work as a Hollywood script writer. Blatty went through the audition but never hoped to be actually called on the show. He was wrong again. A few days later, when he was having lunch at the Four Seasons in New York, he received a message asking if he could come right away to the studio to fill in for another guest, who, for reasons not known, couldn’t appear on the show with Dick. Blatty didn’t hesitate for a moment; he ran six blocks to the studio, knowing that this chance was providential indeed, and even if he were to appear for five minutes as a fill-in, that would give him enough publicity to be taken seriously and perhaps encourage people to buy his book. When he reached the studio, literally gasping for breath, he had another surprise waiting for him. The primary guest for that day also was too drunk to come on stage, and that left Blatty on stage with Dick Cavett for the whole show – nearly forty minutes of talk time. Dick began the conversation by stating that he had heard about Blatty’s new novel “The Exorcist” but confessed he hadn’t read it. He requested Blatty to talk about the book. That was the trigger Blatty needed. For the next thirty minutes, Blatty spoke about the novel and the genesis of the idea. This was the publicity he needed, and he got it almost unexpectedly. Blatty was a charismatic conversationalist; he skillfully positioned the book not as a work of horror but as a tale of faith. It was just the right pitch and advertisement the book required to reach the public. The day after the Dick Cavett show, the bookstores around the country were emptied of all copies of The Exorcist. Those who read it encouraged others to read it. For the next four months, The Exorcist topped the New York Times best-seller list. Blatty became famous, and his reputation was forged forever with the success of The Exorcist. The public read the book as a horror masterpiece. In one of the last interviews before Blatty died in 2014, he told a reporter: “When I was writing the novel, I thought I was writing a supernatural detective story that was filled with suspense with theological overtones. To this day, I have zero recollection of even a moment when I was writing that I was trying to frighten anyone.” This is often the fate of great art; it takes on interpretations that the creator never intended.
Just as the book went unnoticed when it was released, it met the same fate when Blatty wanted to make a movie of it. He approached many Movie houses with a proposal but couldn’t find anyone interested in the subject. Once again, Blatty had good luck. A copy of the book fell into the hands of John Calley, the studio head of Warner Bros. John read the book and was terrified by the experience. He decides to invest in the adaptation. When it came to the choice of a director, Blatty preferred William Friedkin, the maverick and handsome director who had won an Academy Award in 1972. Blatty sent a copy of the book to Friedkin. Like many others, Friedkin didn’t care much about the book initially. He carried the copy in his suitcase for a few months without bothering to read it. One day, sitting in a hotel room with nothing better to do, Friedkin picked up the Exorcist. He was hooked. He continued reading till the wee hours of the morning. And when he finished reading, his decision was made.
It is often difficult for us to decide what to do first: read the book or watch its visual adaptation. Very rarely do both experiences match. Sometimes, a film adaptation transforms a book into an extraordinary cinematic experience, and there are an equal number of instances when movies have failed to do justice to the source material. With The Exorcist, it was clearly the case of the former. The movie elevates the book. Friedkin ensured that the screenplay did not imitate the flow of the book. He rejected Blatt’s initial screenplay and insisted on pruning and accentuating the source material so that the movie could stand on its own. That is the art of screenplay – to keep what is required and leave out the rest. Luckily for Blatty, the years between the decade of the seventies were Friedkin’s best years, and whatever he touched turned to gold. I read the book for the first time during my college days, just after I had watched the movie. And I did so only to check how closely the movie followed the plot of the book. My first impression was that the movie was better. At that time, for whatever reason, I felt the novel to be long-winded and a trifle boring, too. Perhaps I didn’t pay as much attention to the book as I should have. Some books grow on you. The Exorcist was one such book.
On the fiftieth anniversary of the movie, I decided to read the book once again and also watch the film immediately after that. I borrowed a copy from the library. What I got was a paperback published in 2011 on the fortieth anniversary of the book, and I settled down to read it on a Saturday evening. This time around, though, I was keen on reading the book carefully for its literary merit and how well the plot unfolded. The very first paragraph arrested my attention. When I read the lines “He could not shake the premonition. It clung to him like chill wet leaves”, a shiver ran through my spine. Clung to him like Chill wet leaves!! What a beautiful metaphor to describe that tingling sensation of fear we all feel when faced with something incomprehensible and creepy. How did I miss this description the first time around? Perhaps I wasn’t mature enough to grasp the significance of such writing. Again, a few paragraphs later, a gripping sentence: “What was beginning? He dusted the thought like a clay-fresh find, but he could not tag it.” The introductory chapter is a masterclass in writing. Taut, precise, full of terse observations and descriptions that paint an ominous atmosphere of something evil brewing in the deserts of the Middle East, whose horrific reverberations would soon be felt in a townhome in Georgetown, Washington, DC.
I devoured the book in two days, totally taken aback by its narrative brilliance. And I realized why Blatty always insisted that his book was about faith and the horror part of it was incidental. It struck me powerfully that each character in the story has a problem with faith, except Father Merrin, the aging Exorcist, who knows exactly what he is dealing with. Father Karras, a psychologist by training and priest by vocation who advocates Regan’s case for exorcism, openly declares that he has lost his faith. The dozens of doctors who treat Regan for her erratic behavior cannot conceive of any reason other than psychosomatic causes for her abnormal behavior; Chris McNeal, Regan’s mother, ambivalent about her religious inclinations, resorts to blind belief when she cannot bear what is happening to her daughter; The detective who investigates the abnormal fall and death of McNeal’s friend and suspects something wrong in the McNeal household, treats the matter of faith clinically as a social phenomenon. Finally, Regan herself, the young girl, has no clue what faith in God means. In the final scene, however, after she is cured and getting ready to leave the city, she is suddenly moved by the sight of the white collar on Father Dyer’s neck and instinctively runs up to him and kisses him on the cheek. She has absolutely no recollection of what transpired with her, yet somewhere in the deep corners of her mind, an image of a Father with a white collar who did something good for her had registered itself. She innocently kisses Father Dyer on the cheek as a goodbye, out of a sense of gratitude, but not knowing for what. And that is faith – when we believe in something even if we don’t know why. Blatty brings it out beautifully in the novel.
The Exorcist is really not about the devil at all; it is about our belief in God and the conviction that we can count on him. In one of the finest passages in the book, Blatty puts the following words in Father Merrins’s mouth: “I think the demon’s target is not the possessed; it is us … the observers … every person in this house. And I think the point is to make us despair; to reject our own humanity, Damien: to see ourselves as ultimately bestial, vile, and putrescent; without dignity; ugly; unworthy. And there lies the heart of it, perhaps: in unworthiness. For I think belief in God is not a matter of reason at all; I think it finally is a matter of love: of accepting the possibility that God could ever love us.”
After fifty years, with no computer-generated imagery, Exorcist, the movie, may seem a little jaded for modern tastes, but I still found it compelling enough. The experience still can be deeply disconcerting. There are still a few sequences when your heart skips a beat. Overall, though, it is the directorial brilliance, the exquisite screenplay and editing, the incredibly well-staged special effects, the creative use of prosthetics, the haunting music by Jack Nitzsche, and the performances of all the lead actors that make this film a classic. For its time and age, the movie was refreshingly different from the conventional blood-sucking vampire stories that passed as Horror films during those times. For Friedkin, the making of The Exorcist was a high point in his career.
In Georgetown, Washington DC, at the corner of Prospect St and 36th St NW, leading down to M. Street NW, a series of steps slopes precipitously to the street below. It is on these steps that Friedkin shot the final moments of the movie, where Damien Karras, the skeptical catholic priest, heroically tumbles down to his death. A stuntman, a body double, had to tumble down twice to get the scene right. Curious onlookers from nearby Georgetown University paid $5 to watch this unusual and dangerous stunt. In 2015, on Halloween day, these steps were declared a DC landmark and a site of historic importance. Today, a small plaque announces to curious visitors that the famous final scene in The Exorcist was shot here. Many years ago, I visited the spot on a cold November evening after my training. It was quiet, and there was nobody around. I stood at the top of the stairs and looked down. It was getting dark, and I couldn’t see the bottom. The final scenes of the movie ran through my head: Father Karras fighting the devil, forcing it to enter his body, and then unable to contain the surge of evil within, jumping out of the window, down the steps to the bottom and lying there in a pool of blood. I slowly walked down those stairs, halting on each step as a tribute to an iconic film and book.
I recently discovered that Blatty had performed for an audiobook version of The Exorcist. I found it on Audible. Listening to Blatty’s deep voice reading his own text is a totally different experience. Every word and sentence is full of emotion and conjures vivid images in the mind. Father Merrin, Regan, Chris, Damien – all of them come alive in this beautiful narration. There is great pleasure in listening to a story than reading it. There is something about oral traditions that makes stories more intimate and stickier. We still fondly remember the stories our grandparents told us when we were young. Listening to Blatty tell his best story in his own voice is nostalgic.
Blatty’s Exorcist was published on May 5th, 1971, six months before I was born. We share the same age. The Exorcist movie was released in India on August 27th, 1977. We were living in Coimbatore at that time, and the film hit one of the theaters nearby. I was six years old, and I remember my maternal Grandfather, a strict Brahmin and not a movie aficionado, who was visiting us at that time, went alone to watch this film. I was strictly told that this movie was not for me. When my grandpa returned, his face was grim and severe. He said: “The movie was terrifying and not for kids.”
This was my first brush with the Exorcist. Nearly fifty years later, here I am, writing an essay commemorating the book and the movie. That’s a full circle.