The Exorcist, both the novel and the film, have been subject to various misconceptions, some of which this post attempts to correct.
Father Merrin’s archeological dig disturbed the ancient sleep of the demon Pazuzu, who went on to seek vengeance on Merrin via the demonic possession of Regan Macneil.
This is wrong for several reasons. First, Pazuzu is not a demon at all, but rather an ancient Neo-Assyrian deity. His functions are to bring pestilence and to control the southwest wind. His most famous act was to vanquish the evil goddess, Lamashtu, who was considered to be the cause of miscarriage and childhood illness. Hence the Iraqi museum curator’s comment on seeing Merrin handling the Pazuzu amulet he has uncovered from the dig, “Evil against evil.” Neither author Blatty nor director Friedkin suggest that Pazuzu is a demon or is any way involved in the MacNeil possession.
Second, the Pazuzu amulet and later the large Pazuzu statue, figure in the Prologue as projection carriers for Merrin’s mounting sense of dread. Merrin’s unconscious mind seizes on these ancient pagan symbols, which begin to trigger premonitions and feelings of dread within the old priest. They are the stimuli, not the causes, of his apprehensions. The Iraq dig becomes for Merrin an omen, a foreshadowing that he must soon “face an ancient enemy”. This enemy is not Pazuzu, but a nameless demon that Merrin confronted and defeated in Africa some twelve years previously. Nowhere in the novel or the film is the demon named. Certainly if Merrin thought the demon was Pazuzu, he would have called it by that name. Instead, Merrin c0nsistently refers minimally, curtly, to the possessing entity merely as “the demon”.
Film director Burke Dennings was molesting Regan MacNeil.
This is wrong because Blatty goes out of his way to depict Dennings’ murder as despicable and inexplicable, and to portray Dennings as a genuine friend of the MacNeil household. In point of fact Blatty describes Dennings as a kind and thoughtful person, except when inebriated. Moreover, even when inebriated, Blatty describes Dennings as a loud, insulting, obnoxious drunk, not a child molester. In one scene Blatty has the film-wrap dinner party hostesses remove (a briefly unsupervised) Dennings from the premises (i.e., before he would have time to sneak up to Regan’s room for nefarious purposes). But perhaps the most telling argument against the Dennings molestation theory is Regan’s own attitude. Her only objection to Dennings is that her mother might marry him and therefore further displace Regan’s father, Howard MacNeil. Even so, Regan tells her mother Chris that “Mr. Dennings” is welcome to attend her birthday celebration. Obviously, Burke Dennings is no molester. The Exorcist’s only molester is the demon itself.
The pale “demonic” face-flashes seen in Father Damien Karras’s dream and during the exorcism represent Pazuzu.
This is incorrect because Pazuzu, as mentioned above, is not a demon and is not possessing Regan MacNeil. The demonic face is that of actress Eileen Dietz, who was a body/stunt double for Linda Blair (who played Regan). Therefore it would be preferable to call the “flash face” instead “the Dietz Face,” in order to avoid the confusion of calling it “Pazuzu” or “Captain Howdy”. Moreover it must be noted that the Dietz Face in no way resembles the Pazuzu amulet and statue.
The Dietz Face represents Captain Howdy.
This is wrong, at least in terms of the film’s original release. “Captain Howdy” is the name that Regan calls the demon during its initial introductory phase. It is unknown if the name is Regan’s own title or if the demon has so introduced himself. In any case, it is unlikely that the face could represent Howdy, because Karras dreams of the same face, which shows up later in the exorcism. We have no idea what Captain Howdy looks like (if indeed he even has human features). Director Friedkin never visually takes us inside Regan’s mind. We only know that a demonic face – the Dietz Face – appears to Karras in a dream and then later on in the exorcism. Again, this applies to the film’s original release.
However, in The Version You’ve Never Seen (TVYNS), Friedkin does enter Regan’s mind just once, during her initial medical examination, during which her eyes widen and she “sees” the Dietz Face. This establishes that the demon manifests internally at least once to Regan, and at least once to Karras, and it is wearing its Dietz Face.
Even so, there is no reason to think that the Dietz Face is Captain Howdy, since – again – the same face also appears in Karras’s dream. There is no reason that Karras should be seeing the face of Regan’s “imaginary” (demonic) playmate – he has not yet even met Regan or heard her Howdy fantasies; moreover: obviously, Karras is a sophisticated adult, and the demon would likely appear to the priest in a much different form than it appears to the child Regan.
Perhaps the Dietz Face is the demon’s archetypal linkage or interface with the human psyche, or perhaps this is how the human psyche reacts to the demon’s presence. And in any case – as already mentioned - the Dietz Face bears no resemblance whatsoever to Pazuzu, a fact which further strengthens the claim that the demon and the ancient deity are two entirely separate individuals.
Lieutenant William Kinderman (Lee J. Cobb) finds fragments of a clay Pazuzu sculpture at the base of the Hitchcock Steps outside of the MacNeil house. How did the Pazuzu amulet get from Iraq to Georgetown?
This is incorrect. What Kinderman finds at the base of the steps leading to “M” Street are simply Regan’s innocent clay sculptures; they are not heads, amulets, or any other representation of Pazuzu. Presumably these were knocked off her window sill when Dennings was defenestrated. The film does not make clear, but the novel does, that Kinderman takes a sample of the sculptures for analysis, which reveals that the same clay was used to desecrate a Marian statue in a nearby Catholic Church (Regan, possessed, or semi-possessed, was carrying out this “satanic” abuse of holy objects).
How does Karras’s mother die in the hospital when the script has her dying at home?
Mary Karras does not die in the hospital. Rather, Karras comes to visit her and to tell her that he is getting her out of the hospital. It is only after a stay of unknown time at home that Mary sickens again, this time fatally. This is what Father Joseph Dyer refers to at Chris’s dinner party in saying that Mary had been dead for several days before it was discovered that she had passed away.
How does the Saint Joseph medal get from the “Pazuzu hole” in Iraq to Damien Karras’s neck?
It doesn’t. These are two separate medals. Assumptively, the first has been reverently placed in the “Pazuzu hole” by some Christian in order to ward off evil influences of what, to that Christian’s (or Christians’) mind, was an unholy pagan shrine. The second is simply a medal worn by Karras, a Catholic priest, and as such is unremarkable. It’s there to provide resonance with the Prologue’s medal. On a purely symbolic level, once the Iraq medal is removed from the hole, Merrin discovers the Pazuzu head and begins to experience a feeling of growing evil; once the possessed Regan rips away Karras’s medal, the demon manifests “full force” and Karras pulls the demon into himself. This obviously signifies the removal of a symbol of holy protection, followed by the appearance of unholy presences.
The demon killed Merrin, which means that the demon won.
This is erroneous because the demon did not kill Merrin, and the demon considered Merrin’s dying a cheat and a defeat for itself (the demon). Merrin simply died of heart failure. The demon had no influence on Merrin’s death (despite the ludicrous assertions of Exorcist II: the Heretic). Moreover, the demon wanted to kill Regan in Merrin’s presence and in spite of Merrin’s best efforts. That Merrin died before the demon could defeat him (the demon rages that Merrin “would have lost”) galls the demon mercilessly – i.e, Merrin’s dying before the demon could kill Regan is a huge defeat for the demon, not for Merrin.
Karras lost because he was possessed and killed himself.
This is wrong because Karras deliberately invited the demon to possess him. Possession by invitation is not the same thing as (for example, in Regan’s case) possession by sheer victimization. Karras wanted to fight the demon himself, and the demon 0bliged.
That Karras won the fight is obvious because when first possessed, Karras’s features take on the demonic “look” that has haunted Regan throughout her own possession. In this possessed state, Karras advances on Regan – who is now no longer possessed. Friedkin shoots this scene with Regan framed between Karras’ would-be strangler’s hands. Then the shot moves to Karras’s face, as he shouts – in his normal, non-possessed voice – “NO”.
Immediately, the demonic scourge vanishes from Karras’s face, and while Regan is still unpossessed, Karras leaps through the window, taking the demon with him. When Karras impacts at the foot of the steps, it is clear that both he and Regan are now free of the demon.
To underscore this fact, Friedkin shows us Karras making “a good act of contrition” to Dyer, and also shows Regan, once more herself, crying and talking to her mother in her normal voice (this is witnessed by Kinderman as well – as if to cement the objective reality of Regan’s liberation).
Therefore it is clear that Karras won over the demon. In a valid sense, what has happened is “demonicide,” not suicide. Karras has taken on the demon, freed Regan, saved her life… at the cost of his own. To Karras goes the accolade of a self-sacrificial, even Christlike, death. The demon has lost. Human love, and in the novel especially, divine love, have won. Any doubts about this issue can be removed by Blatty’s own repeated statements that the demon did not win, and he does not want readers and audiences thinking that the demon won.
I’ll try to address other misconceptions about this film as they come to me, but for now I believe the major questions have been dealt with.
Filed under: Christianity, film, horror, literature, religion, The Exorcist | Tags: christianity religion film horror literature The Exorcist
[Note: This is a long post. But please bear with me. I think it is necessary to step up and defend Exorcist author Blatty's depiction of character Burke Dennings against a scurrilous and completely unjustified indictment.]
A current theory states that The Exorcist’s demonic possession of Regan MacNeil is a metaphor for child molestation. Theorists suggest that Regan was being molested by her mother’s film director, Burke Dennings. This idea is sheer unsupported speculation; moreover, it contradicts author William Peter Blatty’s own text and intent. It is to be found in neither the Blatty novel nor in the Blatty-Friedkin film.
“Reading out” of a text material that really exists in the text is called exegesis. “Reading into” a text material that does not exist in the text is called eisegesis. Eisegesis is the projection of inappropriate, “foreign” themes onto a narrative. Exorcist molestation theorists are guilty of eisegesis, and a very sloppy one at that.
Blatty’s own depiction of demonic possession is not metaphoric. It is not symbolic. It is not allegorical, analogical, or poetic. It does not point away from itself toward some other layer, genre, theme, or metaliterary realm. Demonic possession in The Exorcist is its primary catalyst for, and explainer of, the behavior, reactions, decisions, and actions of those who witness it.
In short: Regan’s possession “advertises” only itself, and it is Blatty’s clear intent to depict it as a real, authentic, genuine intrusion into the normal world of a malevolent, discarnate, nonhuman, nonmaterial and “ancient” entity. It contains not a hint of human intervention, whether sexual abuse or other.
The Exorcist’s only “child molester” is the demon itself.
Burke Dennings is never enlisted by author Blatty as a potential cause of Regan’s possession. Rather, some such catalysts are suggested: Regan’s isolation and loneliness; her playing with a Ouija board; her father’s absence; her reaction to the onset of early adolescence. In not one of Blatty’s suggested causes is a direct, abusive human element presented.
It could be argued (using sociological principles not greatly widespread when Blatty wrote the novel) that the author should have included a possible molestation scenario as catalyst. However, this idea is a retrojection of current concerns into a decade when such considerations had not yet become “public domain” and common literary themes. So if there is any flaw here, it is not Blatty, it is the times in which he was writing. In any case the essential point here is, of course, that Blatty did not use the molestation theme.
Therefore, Burke Dennings is no more a molester than is any other Exorcist character (one wonders why the domestic Karl is not equally put foward for this role, since the novel shows him in constant proximity to Regan, and emphasises his great physical strength and darkly mysterious taciturnity).
On the contrary, Blatty describes Burke Dennings as a reliable friend of the MacNeils – a man, who when sober, is kind and gentle. (And when Denning is not sober, he does not transform into a child molester; he simply becomes an obnoxious, verbally-not-physically abusive drunk.) An example of this is that, on Regan’s birthday at the movie set, Dennings has the crew rewarm the lights in order to film Regan cutting her cake.
Throughout the first part of the novel, Regan sees very little of Dennings, since he is usually busy directing and going off on drunks; and when he is at the MacNeil home, he is there to see Chris, not Regan. In fact, other than the dinner party scene (and of course the fatal window push incident) Blatty never puts Regan and Burke together in the same room – not in Regan’s room, in Chris’s study, or in the basement where Regan does her artwork.
Regan’s only objection to “Mr. Dennings” is not that he is molesting her, but that he will supplant her father Howard if Chris marries Burke. Blatty’s narrative strongly implies that this is not even Regan’s own idea, but a whispered doubt supplied to her unconscious by the demon. Even so, Regan does not fear or resent Dennings. In fact, in the context of this scene, she says that Mr. Dennings can come along with her and Chris for her birthday celebration. Clearly, in her own subjective world, separate from demonic rumor-mongering, Regan is comfortable in Burke Dennings’ company.
Regarding the famous dinner party scene, Blatty shows Regan going to bed early after a short introduction to the guests. (One of the guests, a psychic, senses that something is wrong with Regan, but immediately attributes it to Regan’s Ouija-board usage, not to molestation.)
Burke Dennings is at this party, but except for Regan’s brief appearance (in which Burke and Regan have no interaction whatsoever), he is completely separated from her as he moves through the crowd insulting all and sundry as he goes. Ultimately he calls Karl “a Nazi”, whereupon Chris sends Burke to “sleep it off” in her study. And… Dennings does just that – he does not unobtrusively (extremely difficult in a crowded house party) make his way upstairs to molest Regan. He flops down in the study and Chris immediately sends Regan’s tutor Sharon into the study – to watch over Burke until he awakens (and to make sure that he leaves without disturbing any more guests.)
At this point, Regan is a troubled child, but she is not yet fully possessed. She manifests her disturbance(s) through several strange behaviors, chief among them the acquiring of an imaginary playmate.
As a concretization of Regan’s disturbance - according to the molestation theory – this invisible playmate ought to bear some direct relation to Burke Dennings. But in reality it does no such thing. Instead, the playmate is called “Captain Howdy” – an “in your face,” obvious reference to missing Dad, Howard MacNiel. There is no molester here, no drooling Dennings or creeping Karl: only the distillation of a lonely child’s abandonment anxiety. (Later it will be shown that the demon is using the “Howdy” identity to manipulate the child’s vulnerability. But suffice it to say that Burke Dennings in Blatty’s narrative is nowhere near the center of Regan’s disturbance.)
Again: The Exorcist’s only “child molester” is the demon itself.
Denning’s lack of criminality or evil intent in the narrative as Blatty wrote it leaves only one baffling question – the primary question the molestation theorists cling to – unanswered: What was Dennings doing in Regan’s room when she broke his neck, turned his head “completely around, facing backward,” and pushed him out her window?
Blatty does not let us know the answer. We can only guess. But from what has preceded, it is clear that, regardless of the reason Dennings went up to Regan’s room, that reason cannot include molestation. We can only theorize that he went upstairs to check on the daughter of his good friend Chris; or that Regan, undergoing a new demonic attack, cried out and Dennings rushed up to assist her; or that the demon, acting through Regan, deliberately lured Dennings upstairs to his death.
One might suspect, rather, that Dennings died because Blatty’s story called for just this death at just this point in the narrative. Dennings’ death is the causal nexus of much of the subsequent story. Removing Dennings and his death from the narrative would completely depotentiate and unravel The Exorcist’s entire narrative.
Perhaps Dennings died because he “had” to die for authorial purposes and narrational soundness. After making that decision, Blatty only had to devise a way for Regan/the demon to kill Dennings privately, when only she and Dennings were in the house together, with no other potential witnesses.
And that is the most plausible reason for Dennings being alone with Regan in the house and in Regan’s room. Plot device, not molestation, placed these two characters together at the same time and in the same place.
The Exorcist’s only “child molester” remains the demon itself.
I was never an enthusiast for ocean wading, but after viewing Steven Spielberg’s Jaws I was definitely phobic - chiefly, but not solely, about sharks. One summer I was vacationing in Gearhart, Oregon, which was having an “El Nino” wave of unseasonably warm water. The normally chilly Pacific was abnormally tepid – like a lagoon under a tropical summer sky – very unusual for the northern Oregon coast, even in summer. Strangely frequent shark sightings, even of Great Whites, were being reported.
In his short story The Lake, Ray Bradbury writes how water is like a magician who cuts you in half – the solid upper half above the waterline, and the wavey, less solid lower half. I, however, was not to experience that illusion, because the surf that day was such that, coming to just above my knees, it did not allow my submerged portions visibility. I waded out far enough that the land receded from peripheral vision, so that all I could see was ocean. Visually, I may as well have been all adrift upon this summer sea, and the thought came to me that there was nothing – literally no land – between me and Hawaii.
Then my thoughts turned to the volume and opaqueness of the water I was standing in. Almost anything could be beneath that water, and I would be unable to see it. Old debris… a submerged log, perhaps, that would bump or trip me on the next surge of waves… don’t sharks bump their prey before attacking? What other living creature, naturally equipped with aquatic vision and kinetic skills that I did not have, might be in the water with me – its presence totally undetectable, until it touched me… or a fin broke the surface…?
The water was warm, the day perfect, but I was done. Slowly I turned my back to the indifferent sea, onto which I had projected fears – fears that were mostly the inheritance of one finely-crafted film…
Filed under: Christianity, film, horror, literature, The Exorcist | Tags: The Exorcist film literature christianity religion
In Legion’s opening credits a man dressed in a cassock (long black robe) of a Catholic priest appears twice as the camera moves down along the dark street; the original exorcism/MacNeil house appears on the right at the end of the street?
I watched the film several times before I got oriented to the locale – I knew it was Georgetown, but then I finally noticed the MacNeil house on the right. The tree in the yard has grown bigger and there is a dark green fence around the yard, but it’s obviously “the” house, overlooking “the” steps.
Soon after that, I jumped out of my skin when I noticed a dark figure wearing a cassock darting from left to right across the street, then a little later from right to left. You have to look hard and diligently to see the figure, because the large scale “font” used for the credits is so dominating. This scene would work much better without any distracting credits at all.
The chilling thing about this scene is the basic question – here we are approaching the MacNeil house once more, after some fifteen years have elapsed from the original Exorcist novel and the Blatty-Friedkin film. What in the world is a priest doing darting back and forth on this deserted street? Only one answer suggests itself: this person can only be Damien Karras. But what is Karras doing here? Isn’t he dead? What’s going on?
My take on it is that the entire is a dream that the demonically-trapped Karras and the Gemini Killer are sharing – the Gemini’s portion are the supernatural disruptions in the empty church – the “Pazuzu wind” that tears through the church and blasts open the doors; Karras’s part is the memory of “a rose, and a fall down a long flight of stairs”. In this dream – or psychic metaphor of Karras’s current “lost” condition - the tormented priest is “haunting” the scene of his partial victory/partial defeat of fifteen years before.
Another interpretation might be that the “darting priest” is a nightmarish reference to the night of Karras’s death when, reanimated by the demon and the Gemini, Killer, he broke free from his cheaply constructed Jesuit coffin. Perhaps he literally – or more plausibly symbolically – “ran mad” in his resuscitated body, now animated – but only tentatively at this early juncture – by the Gemini.
Regardless of the interpretation, I invite all Legion fans who have not yet noticed the running priest to look attentively at the opening credits – you will be rewarded with yet another chilling brush stroke in Blatty’s dark filmic portrait.
(P.S. One other thing is so difficult to see I hesitate to mention it, but just before the opening credits, when the supernatural wind blows through the church, there is a shot from inside the church looking out through the open doors. On the extreme left is a figure standing stock-still that looks like a priest in a cassock. However, this only lasts a nano-second, and it might only be a lighting artifact – as I said, I hesitate to mention it because of its “iffy” quality. But if it’s really there, we can credit Blatty with still another creepy bit.)
Filed under: Christianity, film, horror, literature, religion, The Exorcist | Tags: The Exorcist literature film horror christianity religion
The novel’s “Twins” motif was dropped in the film, but was prominent and even crucial to the book’s narrative. The novel presents a spiritual relationship between mass murderer James Vennamun and his beloved, but mentally-emotionally damaged, brother. The damaged brother dies, James becomes “the Gemini Killer,” then himself dies… then, through demonic intervention, he enters Karras’ resuscitated corpse. However, in an act of transcendent love, his dead brother searches for James and eventually finds him in Karras’ body. When contact is made, the “weaker” but saintly brother convinces James to end the killing spree, freeing him from the demon’s grip and from Karras’ body. Finally the “Twins” are once more restored to their prior unity in love – as they had been in their mortal lives.
The Twins theme is duplicated in Blatty’s cosmological myth of “the Angel.” We human beings turn out to be the Angel. Our origin was as two primoridal light-beings living with each other in loving unity. They are “One though Two”. They are both spirit-Twins, united in primal love. Then one of these radiant beings decides to live its own life, including pain and evil, as Creation. The Other tells its “Brother” about the burdens this will entail, yet we – the Divine Brother who desires Becoming – insist that we must seek our destiny in “Manifestation.” The Other agrees to this “Great Split,” saying that in the future both sphere and light-point will be once more united in love: “Hasten the day.” In becoming the manifest, created world, the primal divine light-point – we, human beings – have become the Angel seeking its divine origins who appears in Kinderman’s dreams.
We also function as the Creation-Upward-Groping to its godly origins, an idea which forms the essence of Father Lankester Merrin’s mystical vision in the original novel. The parallels to the Gemini/Vennamun case are obvious. The earthly twins’ life story duplicates the cosmic story of Sphere and Light-Point – both begin in love. One (James Vennamun) seeks its destiny in the material world.And of course, the term, “the Gemini Killer,” as James Vennamun is known, itself connotes twins. The other finally makes its own journey in order that both can once again be bound together in the unity they had before their “Great Split.”
Another “Twins” parallel is between Dr. Amfortas and his Double. At first taken as a hallucination, it soon becomes evident to Amfortas that his Double is his spiritual Twin – in this case, his “good” Angel in opposition to his egoic personality which is deeply implicated in the Gemini’s crime spree. While there is no explicit reunion of Amfortas with his Double-Twin, Blatty does supply implicit hints that all is not lost. The reader is left with the impression that, with a certain amount of penitential cleansing (perhaps in a Purgatorial or “Bardo” state), Amfortas and his Good Twin may at last be reunited as some kind of “blessed spirit” in the next life.
Finally, there is the “Twins” configuration in the Kinderman/Father Dyer dyad. These two characters seem to be Blatty’s expression of an idealized “Twins” relationship, in contradistinction to the flawed dyads exemplified by the Gemini twins, and Amfortas and his Good Double. The Kinderman/Dyer “twinship” is is a shadowy, earthly example of the heavenly union-in-love brotherhood found in the “Pre-Great-Split” unity of Sphere and Light-Point prior to the world’s creation. There are probably several other “Twins” motifs present in Blatty’s novel. The examples in this articles are just the ones I’ve detected thus far – or, at least, imagined.
SPOILERS AHEAD for those who have not read the book.
John Wyndham’s original novel was not about a botanical invasion from space. The novel’s triffids did not arrive via meteors. Rather, they were a completely human product of high-tech industry, developed for their oil which could be used in a fantastic number of applications. One daring air pirate, in attempting to smuggle triffid seeds from a triffid farm in Russia, is shot down. The plane explodes, the seeds are caught in air currents and are widely disseminated. Eventually the secret of triffid farming becomes well known. Triffid farms abound around the world, and many people keep de-stinged triffids as amusing “walking plant” pets. The protagonist, Mason, in fact, was stung as a youth by an early-blooming triffid growing in the trash heap of his own back yard. From this incident he develops a partial immunity to triffid venom.
Mason is not a merchant marine sailor as the film portrays him. He’s a triffid farmer who has a one-in-a-thousand times accident with a triffid sting, some of whose venom penetrates his protective mask, temporarily blinding him. It is while he is recovering in the hospital that the “Night of the Green Meteors” occurs. Mason awakes to a world mostly gone blind. When the triffids find that most humans are blind, they have a field day taking humans as easy prey – as in the movie.
However, unlike the movie, late in the novel, Wyndham’s characters speculate at the POSSIBLE HUMAN ORIGINS of the catastrophe that has befallen the world, namely:
1) The triffids are not alien plants. They are the product of human technology. Generally harmless when properly tethered and/or de-stinged, they become terribly dangerous only through the failure of human foresight, namely:
2) The meteor shower, which is not necessarily a meteor shower at all. The chilling speculation is given out that “all kinds of nasty things were circling over our heads in space” -i.e., nuclear and bio-weaponry. Why not a ring of “Classified” orbiting weapons designed to burn out the human retina? This is where the novel is at its most horrific, sardonic and prophetic best. The entire triffid catastrophe is strongly implied to have been entirely man-made. Mason speculates that a partial test – or a limited attack – of the “green meteor” weapons may have gotten out of control. Or – perhaps – a genuine swarm of green meteors came along and inadvertently knocked the orbiting retina-burners into the atmosphere, where they fell over the globe, willy-nelly and with no control or discrimination.
Wyndham’s novel is thus sci-fi/horror at its darkest (pun intended). Today’s superweaponry certainly matches, if not exceeds, Wyndham’s grim scenario. Wyndham didn’t imagine weapons any worse than those that have existed, do exist, and will be developed in the future. I would very much like to see Triffids filmed as Wyndham wrote it. Not as an invasion of space plants, but as a completely human-created catastrophe, an ecological horror fantasy that will knock smaller boats like Whitley Strieber’s The Day After Tomorrow clean out of the water.
Filed under: Christianity, film, horror, literature, religion, The Exorcist | Tags: The Exorcist literature film horror christianity religion
William Peter Blatty wrote a sequel to his smash success, The Exorcist. Legion the novel went through several transformations for the film version, some of whose issues are addressed below. The article is somewhat esoteric and will most appeal to Blatty fans and fans of this, the third Exorcist movie.
POINT ONE: The Pazuzu Wind and blowing curtains in Regan’s room in the original Friedkin film. Of course there are no curtains in the Gemini’s cell. But there were plenty of visionary manifestations (crucified Karras rising up thru the lightning-cracked floor) and actual paranormal events (fire-blasted prayer book, priest and Kinderman thrown up against ceiling/wall). So lack of the Pazuzu Wind isn’t too significant. Also recall that the Pazuzu Wind is usually only a symbol of demonic presence, not yet the full demonic manifestation. The curtains blowing in the first Exorcist movie may have been the Pazuzu Wind manifesting as a detached blast of the demon’s power just before Karras takes it out the window with him.
POINT TWO: I think that in Legion – the movie, not the book – Karras’ possession works like this: 1) Karras takes Pazuzu out the window with him at the end of The Exorcist. 2) The demon is defeated regarding its primary goal – killing Regan. 3) The demon is infuriated by this defeat, and while he is still inside Karras’ body – though his power to control Karras is severely attenuated – he pulls in Vennamun’s soul and inserts it into Karras’ dying body. 4) Karras momentarily “dies” but his soul stays in his body. He immediately regains a helpless consciousness, knowing that he is still in his body, but now he shares it not with Pazuzu, but with Vennamun’s redirected soul. 5) The demon now has a hold on Vennamun’s soul which is now incarnated in Karras’ body. The demon has now left Karras’ body and no longer has direct control of Karras – in fact, the demon doesn’t need it, because his “son, the Gemini” perfectly executes the demon’s will. 6) This state of affairs continues until the crisis occurs – the intervention of Fr. Morning as exorcist – like Fr, Lankester Merrin before him pursuing an ancient enemy, namely Pazuzu, and only secondarily the pipsqueak Vennamun. 7) By the time Morning enters the cell, the demon has taken over – the demon must protect “my son the Gemini.” Demonic big guns are required to fight an exorcist – puny little Vennamun/the Gemini is only granted the relatively small power of possessing only whom Pazuzu permits, and is limited to killing victims whose names contain the letter “K.” For a real exorcistic showdown, the demon himself must come to the Gemini’s rescue. 8) From the time Morning appears, the Gemini is not heard from and has no dialogue. This means that he has been put on the back burner (pun intended) so the demon itself can battle Morning. 9) So, at the end of Legion, Karras was not simultaneously possessed by the Gemini and the demon. It was only the demon at the end – in fact near the climax the demon says the famous Blatty phrase, “There is only one.”
POINT THREE: Kinderman and the “English spoken in reverse” tape from the original novel and film. I don’t think Kinderman was unduly moved by this as evidence of the supernatural. The university president mentions it only in passing, and Kinderman’s dialogue does not pursue the matter. (Chances are Kinderman already knows about it but is just picking the president’s brain.) Nor would Kinderman necessarily think the reverse language was proof of genuine possession – any more than Karras did. Blatty assures the reader that the Church accepts paranormal, brain-related super-feats as possibly just natural paranormal phenomena, temporarily unexplained. So potentially it was an indicator in both Karras’ and Kinderman’s minds of genuine possession, but inasmuch as it may also have been mere paranormalia, it would not necessarily constitute proof of such.
How was Pazuzu able to do this? First, we don’t know what capacities talented demons might have, and we don’t know how they work their dark mechanisms. Second, we still don’t know if it was Pazuzu who was doing it – if we take the “naturally-accelerated brain skills” argument seriously. Again, it’s a case of maybe the demon was doing it, or maybe it was just Regan’s ailing-but-accelerated neurology that was causing her to speak so unusually.
POINT FOUR: The question of the expelled demon’s location after leaving Karras at the end of Legion. Since Kinderman’s bullets finally, utterly killed Karras’ body, and especially since the final head shot this time definitely killed his brain, the assumption would be that the demon (and Vennamun) were finally returned to Outer Darkness, that place “Over there, on the other side where theycan be so cruel” – i.e., Hell. There was now zero possibility of either Pazuzu or Vennamun tormenting Karras further. We are strongly led to assume that all’s right in the world and that Pazuzu’s temporary reign of terror has come to a satisfying (for us, not for him!) close. The bad guys are in “jail” (Hell) – where they belonged in the first place until they “escaped”. Where the demon went is ultimately a secret known only to its creator, William Peter Blatty.
Blatty could have had the demon jump into Kinderman… or come back in some other guise in some future novel. We can’t tell where the demon went either from Blatty’s Legion novel or from his Legion film. We can only hope that the liberated Karras was right when he told Kinderman, “We’ve won. Kill me now, Bill…” This was written as a “happy” ending – Karras was finally free of both Vennamun and Pazuzu. He finally went to heaven – which destiny he was cheated out of fifteen years before at the bottom of that long flight of stairs leading down to M Street. To have Pazuzu repossess anyone would put a sappy, cliched horror movie ending on the story – like those old 1950s horror movies that, after presenting an “all is well” conclusion, proceed to flash “THE END” – followed by the irritating question mark: “THE END…??” Thankfully Blatty avoided those kinds of cheap stereotypes in his cinematic re-telling of the Legion story.
Sadly, there are very few Lovecraft-based films that succeed in communicating the Master’s ideas, themes, and feeling-toned prose. There have been loads of bad movies made and claiming to be made on Lovecraftian motifs, inside and outside the US, and most are ludicrous failures. All too many newcomers to Lovecraft, as well as all too many over-eager fans, rush to produce “a Lovecraft film,” only to end up violating Lovecraft on every level.
One such well-known filmic monstrosity, The Dunwich Horror, (starring Guy Stockwell, Sandra Dee, and Ed Bagley) takes its title from Lovecraft’s novella, and then proceeds to savage the narrative. Even allowing for its (badly executed) updating to modern times, the movie introduces elements completely foreign to HPL’s writing, such as a “cute, young” female protagonist (not found in the original story); the main character Wilber Whately – in HPL’s tale a human-alien hybrid – is portrayed as a “Mod” dabbler in the occult; a stereotypical presentation of the supernatural mostly severed from HPL’s own unique magical-demonic-alien realms; location filming done on the California coast as opposed to the novella’s setting of rural Massachussetts (in which no oceans, Pacific or Atlantic, figure at all)… and many other troublesome departures from the tale as HPL told it.
This situation is paralleled in any number of films claiming to be based on Lovecraft’s stories: too many veerings-away, for no apparent reason except indulgence of a producer’s ego and manufacturing mass/youth market “appeal.” This even exists in films not crediting HPL for their major themes, but which “borrow” a Lovecraftian story line, an alien, a monster, a ritual or whatnot, only to misrepresent even those dessicated remains of the original.
How to fix this deplorable situation? Not being a film maker or screenwriter, I’m not sure, but here are some intuitions based on the principle of making excellence and faithfulness to source material essential:
1) Do the film as HPL wrote the story. Do the stories as period pieces. Film in color or b&w, but preserve Lovecraft’s settings.
2) Update, but don’t mutilate, the story. Do not introduce obnoxious, cliched, shallow young characters (very few of HPL’s characters are ever very young) from stock/schlock horror movies. Very little cursing (there is none in Lovecraft), no cheap jokes and goofing around (none in Lovecraft), no sex (there is none in Lovecraft, except as related or implied at a distance), no non-Lovecraftian occult themes, demons, aliens, etc… no non-Lovecraftian rationales or explanations. You are showcasing Lovecraft, not Richard Matheson, William Peter Blatty, Ridley Scott, Fritz Leiber, E. A. Poe, Rod Serling, Peter Straub, Wes Craven, John Carpenter, Stanley Kubrik, Erik Von Daaniken, or any other contributor to the genre, regardless of his or her relative value.
3) Provide an original, serious musical score. No pop/rock, no bands, no soloists, and no synthesizers if they can be avoided. No “experimental” atonal electronic stuff, either. Incidental music, even if pop/rock, should be presented naturalistically (e.g., a radio or TV playing in the background). Do not sell the film, or its soundtrack, on the “merits” of pop music and commercial bands and musicians. If you can’t afford a film composer, hire a competant music editor, preferably someone with experience in locating and applying public domain and classical music for films, commercials, and documentaries.
4) Have the $$ to provide realistic, convincing sfx. If you don’t have the money, scrap the project. You don’t need to make a film that has inadequate or laughable sfx. Lovecraft deserves state of the art production values – music, sound, photography, editing… and sfx. Don’t sink your film from the get-go because you don’t have funding for convincing sfx. If another, wealthier producer really ought to be doing “your” film, be humble and accept it, or offer your script to or collaborate with more able artists. After all, this is Lovecraft you are representing.
5) Do not time-stretch a short story that should occupy only 45 minutes of screen time into the standard nearly-two-hour epic. Do give the story its proper time allowance. If it’s too short, then shoot (say) another one or two short stories – make it a trilogy or an anthology.
6) Do not evaluate for HPL. Present his ideas without commentary, modification, expansion, or deletion. He is the Master, you are his presenter. Don’t forget that pecking order.
7) For Azathoth’s sake: Pay attention to Lovecraft’s narrative, and to his story-telling. Pace the film as the story itself is paced. Naturally you will have difficulties with a tale like The Shadow Out of Time. Juggle as necessary, but be conservative. Tread lightly.
8) For the love of Cthulhu: Scrap the project if the story as written doesn’t seize and inspire you. Film Steve King instead – or someone else whose material spurs you to make movies. Leave Lovecraft for Lovecraft lovers.
9) Keep whatever horrifies and fascinates you about the story firmly in your mind’s eye at all times. If it is Lovecraft’s story that scares you, that inspires your awe, then communicate the story’s “horror and awe” feeling-tone as faithfully as you can. Remember, you are telling Lovecraft’s story, not King’s or Straub’s or Craven’s – or your own.
10) Be respectful, if not reverential. You are using HPL’s material. Recognize that in putting his ouevre on the silver screen, you owe that work – and HPL – a lot. Don’t be cocky. Serve the material. Don’t allow it to serve you. Approach it with humility. Don’t be out to improve on it. If you want to improve on Lovecraft, you’re not a true afficionado and you should be doing other projects.
I could probably say more, but these ten points present the gist of it: If you’re going to do Lovecraft, do Lovecraft… or leave him alone. Do not produce another in a long line of disgraces.
Filed under: horror, literature, spirituality | Tags: horror literature spirituality
Horror writer and man of letters H.P. Lovecraft made much of his stoic materialism, as do many of his fans, including his chief biographer, S.T. Joshi. It is always comforting to share a life view with writers one admires, so it is not unnatural that so many Lovecraft followers find in him a champion of their own reductionist materialism.
However, Lovecraft was not an entirely happy materialist. In his letters he affirms that the negation of the scientific, natural law he defends elsewhere is really his only reason for writing. It brings him a certain satisfaction, and in his own words expresses his sense of cosmic revolt. On the one hand, Lovecraft is intellectually a skeptic; on the other, his skepticism chafes – to the extent he must do something about it – namely, write “weird tales,” cosmic and supernatural horror stories. Of course, no human being is a gray, uniform creature: all of us are at the same time a universe and a multiverse. Lovecraft was no exception. What he was in his rational function is counterbalanced by what he was in his emotional and poetic character. His mind was rationalistic, his soul mystic.
HPL was always something of a nature mystic. This is affirmed not only in his letters. It is embedded in his literature. The central passages of The Whisperer in Darkness, The Colour Out of Space and The Dunwich Horror entire are unthinkable without Lovecraft’s loving description of New England hills, farms, mountains and woods, its dark brooks that never see the glint of sunlight, its swollen trees flourishing in wild forest belts. Here his cosmic stoicism gives way to unabashed affection and a celebration of primal mystery. If the world was not made for man, it can with some probity be said, rural New England was made for Lovecraft.
This is not all. On rare occasions, HPL, like a Taoist (or even Camus on a good day) seemed to sense a meaning hidden in things. Like many mystics, he cannot name what it is, but it fascinates, lures, tantalizes.
I cannot tell why some things hold for me
A sense of unplumbed marvels to befall,
Or of a rift in the horizon’s wall
Opening to worlds where only gods can be.
There is a breathless, vague expectancy..
It is in sunsets and strange city spires,
Old villages and woods and misty downs,
South winds, the sea, low hills, and lighted towns,
Old gardens, half-heard songs, and the moon’s fires.
But though its lure alone makes life worth living,
None gains or guesses what it hints at giving.
And:
There is in certain ancient things a grace
Of some dim essence – more than form or weight;
A tenuous aether, indeterminate,
Yet linked with all the laws of time and space.
A faint, veiled sign of continuities…
Of locked dimensions harbouring years gone by,
And out of reach except for hidden keys.
It moves me most when slanting sunbeams glow
On old farm buildings set against a hill,
And paint with life the shapes which linger still
From centuries less a dream than this we know.
In that strange light I feel I am not far
From the fixt mass whose sides the ages are.
With Lovecraft, we too might wonder at the veiled Mystery, forever established, eon-encircled… and about what hidden keys might open it to us. The rift in the horizon beckons.
[Quotations from Lovecraft, H.P., Fungi from Yuggoth & Other Poems, Ballantine Books, NY: 1971, pp. 137-138.]
Filed under: Christianity, horror, literature, religion | Tags: horror literature religion christianity
James Blish wrote a horrifying novel when he penned Black Easter. The book’s single conceit is the proposition that Western Medieval magic is real and viable. This creates a minimally alternate universe in which magicians wield real power and black magicians are set against a holy order of Roman Catholic magicians. Granted that formula, however, the story’s world is the same as today’s.
The action begins when a wealthy arms manufacturer approaches the world’s most powerful black magician,
Theron Ware, and proposes a special magical deed: the unleashing of all the demons of Hell for one night, just to see what might happen. Blish’s portrayal of both the magus and the industrialist is contemporary and chilling. Power trumps all other considerations in this ploy to release Hell upon the earth on Easter Day.
The narrative accelerates as the holy Catholic order gets involved in the plot, exercising as many options as the authentic practice of magic allows in order to thwart Ware’s intentions. And this is a major point in the novel: demons, angels, magicians, and even God are restricted – as well as abetted – by the regulations of the game. God’s constraint (willing or unwilling) is a key to understanding the tale’s denouement, as well as presenting a huge puzzle and frustration to the Catholic monk-magician who is – or is trying to be – Ware’s nemesis.
The interested reader might guess from the book’s title the outcome of Ware’s experiment. The novel ends with a short speech by the invoked Sabbath Goat, and his final three words are as marrow-freezing as any in the genre. The book is so skilfully written that one might wish the story to continue beyond the specified Easter. In fact, it does, in its sequel (actually a companion book) The Day After Judgment. If theological speculation and ruminations on the human drive for power are one’s cup of tea, these books are highly recommended.
