Movie Takes
WHILE I WAS waiting in a long, cold line to get into The Exorcist, a girl who was with a group of people behind me detached herself from the group and went to sit on a stone stoop.
“Hey, I hope you freeze your tail off,” one of her friends said.
“Hey, I hope you get a hemorrhoid,” one of her male friends said.
When I got inside the theater and The Exorcist started, the dialogue did not get any better. But the movie was terribly scary.
The Exorcist is a movie which is so bad that one must stand back and watch the full scope of the retreat on which it has led modern moviemaking to fully understand its significance.
Such story as there is concerns the devil’s taking up residence in a human body. And not just any old body. The devil enters the body and soul of a lovely, not-yet nubile twelve-year-old girl. She is the daughter of a movie star who is temporarily living in Washington, D.C., in a mansion in Georgetown.
(Why the devil, who could presumably go anywhere, should go to Washington is never explained, which is just as well.)
We know that the girl is inhabited by a devil when she starts urinating on the floor and talking dirty. She also does many other stunts, such as vomiting upon people far across the room and twisting her head all the way around in a circle.
Well, what’s a mother to do?
She takes the tyke, whose name is Regan, to a series of doctors who suspect brain damage and put the child and the devil through a series of medical procedures which make anything the devil does look positively beatific by comparison.
Of course they find nothing and neither does a psychiatrist, whom Regan knocks across the room with a single punch. So Regan has to go to the hospital for the insane, where nothing can be done either. Finally someone has the presence of mind to suggest an exorcist from the Holy Mother Church, and then the contest begins.
While all of this has been going on, there is a parallel plot about Damien Karras, S.J., a psychiatric priest, whose job it is to treat priests who think they have lost their “vocation” while he is rapidly losing his.
All of this is about half as exciting as an examination in trigonometry. But the movie is punctuated at regular intervals by individual horror events, such as the highly touted scene in which Regan abuses herself with a crucifix.
That is the problem.
The whole movie is just a backdrop for one horrible event about every seven minutes—a beating, some super-filthy language, vomiting, tons of blood. The movie is just a carnival of scary scenes. It is strung together without any sensible connective tissue whatever. All of the scenes between the horror are pure filler. They are utterly unmemorable and serve only as prelude to each new shock.
About the Author
Ben Stein is a writer, actor, economist, and lawyer living in Beverly Hills and Malibu. He writes “Ben Stein’s Diary” for every issue of The American Spectator.
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Frank Drackman| 2.22.13 @ 6:08AM
"Enter the Dragon" was a million times better than either...
Occam's Tool| 2.25.13 @ 7:06PM
What I liked about Bruce Lee was that the guy MOVED like a jungle cat...imagine him in Kung Fu instead of David Carradine, and weep.
Albert Constantine Jr.| 2.22.13 @ 7:16AM
The year 1974 was a great year for film comedy, as both "Blazing Saddles" and "Young Frankenstein" are listed as being released that year (I didn't see either until 1975, after we got HBO).
C. Vernon Crisler | 2.22.13 @ 11:15AM
Strange, Exorcist is not even scary anymore, having been surpassed years ago by blood-soaked movies and gore-fests.
The Root '83| 2.22.13 @ 11:43AM
I realize this article was published decades ago, but allow an opinion of it tempered by nostalgia. I think you’re selling a bit short on The Sting. For whatever sins of failure they had in revealing the true nature of our human souls, I forgive them. Because short of that, it’s still a damn good movie.
To those of us who were( ironically) Regans age when The Sting debuted, it was a “grown up” film that could be digested and enjoyed. In re-runs on television with our parents and grandparents, who LIVED in the 20’s and 30’s, we got a taste of the clothes, cars, music and history of their time. It was our introduction to “clever”, “plot twist” and “suspense”.
The Sting, like The Great Waldo Pepper, introduced us to an era we would happily read and learn MORE about, for having seen those films and been intrigued. And the Nose Salute became as Iconic a gesture to us as Steve McQueens baseball and glove in The Great Escape.
I had the good fortune of seeing “Forest Gump” with a friend during its first week of release, practically by accident. We had never heard of it, and just walked in on a whim. No matter anyone’s eventual view of its worthiness, it is undeniable that it’s status AS a film, IS heavily discussed.
And now we both share that same jewel of experience…to have seen it ice cold and unknown, and walk out, turn to each other and say “I think…we just…SAW something, didn’t we?”
That’s good enough for me.
Albert Constantine Jr.| 2.22.13 @ 2:30PM
By the name that you're posting under, and the age you describe in 1974, would any of the following have any significance to you?:
a) 32 MAU
b) 24 MAU
c) 22 MAU
d) 241
Bob Grant| 2.22.13 @ 2:35PM
I was also approx Regan's age when the Exorcist was released so I was a bit too young to see it at the theaters. Actually, I didn't WANT to see it. The commercials, which invariable aired RIGHT before bedtime (approx 9:58), triggered plenty of nightmares on their own. I've viewed the movie multiple times since and while some of the scenes are laughable in retrospect, it never fails to trigger a few of those same feelings I felt as a child. Ahh, the power of the human psyche. And I think it still holds up fairly well as a horror flick...
What feelings I had about The Exorcist, the Sting induced opposite ones. From the perspective as a kid, it was fun, stylistic, had a good story line, and the music was memorable, in a cheesy way.
I don't know what Stein's problem is. Apparently, that stick up his posterior has been lodged for several decades. He needs to lighten up, eat a Five Guys hamburger, watch Skyfall for the nauseating umpteenth time, and go find more nubiles to drool over.
MSJ | 2.22.13 @ 9:10PM
I understand this aticle was written in 1974, but since he chose to run it again without further comment one can assume he stands by it.
The idea that the man who was an accomplice is inflicting Ferris Bueller upon us is going to pan an American movie classic is nuts.
The Exorcist was not a plotless gore-fest; it was a well-written film about the reality of evil in the world - both seen and unseen - and the need for faith to combat it, even in a modern world that has rejected it.
That message is more relelant today than ever.
Until Ben Stein apologizes for his role in Ferris Bueller, I'll take his advise on film and culture with a gigantic grain of salt.
Albertus Magnus| 2.23.13 @ 8:01AM
"(Why the devil, who could presumably go anywhere, should go to Washington is never explained, which is just as well.)"
The Devil did not just "go" to Washington. DC is where his home office is located. People go to Washington DC wanting to do "good" and wind up being sucked in to the greatest systematic corruption in the History of the World. Idealistic youth go to DC and are scammed in to selling their souls to the Devil and become part of the Devil's greatest recruitment tool, the United States Government.
Cato the Younger| 2.23.13 @ 12:36PM
I've been a TAS subscriber since 1979, so I've been reading Stein a looong time now. Fun to see one of his earliest efforts for the magazine, and a reminder that his writing efforts were once lively and interesting. I'll never forget his feature article in the early 1980s, I think it was, where he described Hollywood executives tooling around L.A. in their convertible luxury sports cars with 16-year-old girls in the passenger seat as a kind of status symbol. Where's the trenchant, almost Tom Wolfean aspect to his writing now? Ben, you've become sclerotic! You're hanging out with too many tool-and-die manufacturers and insurance salesmen and not enough with Beverly Hills madams and assorted movie industry coke-heads. You should do a feature article on the prodigious polymath Charlie Sheen or do a series of "where are they now" articles, with names like Paulie Shore and Andrew 'Dice' Clay. Enough on the Laffer Curve and the Hawley-Smoot Tariff, already!
Bill8472| 2.23.13 @ 1:40PM
The Exorcist isn't even seen all that often on TV. It established itself as a bad movie two generations ago. The twisted ending of The Sting, agreed, makes the betrayal theme go a bit flat, but by then the audience is interested mostly in seeing the con work itself out. Furthermore, if The Sting is a bad movie, it's also had a very long time to establish itself as such.
I'd have been much more interested in seeing an analysis of Ben Stein's favorite movie du jour, Skyfall.
Bill8472| 2.23.13 @ 1:42PM
Ignore the above. I just saw that this commentary is a reprint of a 1974 effort. Duh.