The Exorcist (1971) - William Peter Blatty

 

I still remember standing in line outside in the dark back in 1973 for a couple of hours waiting for my chance to see the movie version of The Exorcist - and how you couldn’t finally walk inside to your seat without feeling at least a little sense of dread. I had read William Peter Blatty’s novel the previous year, so I knew what to expect, but the buzz around this movie was so hyped up that everyone wanted to see it as soon as they could. And the movie lived up to its publicity: people were fainting in their seats, running out of the theaters in shock, and even using the barf bags that some theaters were handing out at the door. 

I was pleased to find that my re-reading of The Exorcist last week did nothing to cheapen my appreciation for the effect that the novel has had on so many people over the years. (I haven’t seen the more recent remake of the movie, and can’t compare the two versions, but now I’m curious.)

It all starts innocently enough.

Chris MacNeil is done with her own work on a movie being shot in Washington D.C. but decides that she and her daughter, Reagan, will stay on in their rented Georgetown home until everything is formally shut down on the movie. Chris and Reagan have made friends both on and off the set, and living in Georgetown has been a good experience for both of them. But after twelve-year-old Reagan is possessed by an ancient demon, their world turns into a nightmare. Numerous doctors fail to help her daughter, so Chris straps Reagan down in her bed and watches her turn into an unimaginable monster - one filled with superhuman strength and  rage - while she searches for another solution.

Desperate for help, and even though she is an atheist, Chris finally turns to a Jesuit priest she’s befriended, a man who is himself skeptical about the legitimacy of demonic possession. And the battle is on.

Blatty’s novel is a well researched one based partially on a 1949 Maryland exorcism he heard about while in college. Too, Blatty was Jesuit educated, and he quotes extensively from books on the subject, including the Rituale Romanum, the 1614 Catholic book of rites that details the exorcism procedure that has been followed for centuries. My one criticism of the novel, in fact, is that the pacing of the exorcism section gets a bit bogged down by all of the historical explanation offered in the midst of the horror being described. 

Because The Exorcist so explicitly details the horrors being inflicted on the body of a child, it is not an easy novel to read. The novel is far more appalling than the movie for that reason - and the movie is most certainly a gut-punch. So, beware of this one.