I've never seen The Exorcist (I don't do well at scary movies - as a kid I hid behind the couch when the wicked witch of the West showed up - I've always been an overly serious child) but I read the book in a college lit class. That's where I read Shelley's 'Frankenstein; or, the Modern Prometheus' and Bram Stokers' 'Dracula' and I loved those... my imagination did a much better job of conjuring up the scenes than any movie ever could. Besides, when I read the story straight from the author, I'm getting the real deal, not some "interpretation".
But I hated The Exorcist. Even in the middle of a lovely spring, this book haunted me like a storm crow, a dark shadow hiding in the margins of a sunny day. And a sunny day it was, because that was the very spring that I came out to myself and the world. I know exactly the scene that did it: where demon-possessed Regan stabs a crucifix into her Rosy Twat while screaming "Fuck me Jesus!". I've always hated William Peter Blatty for that.
And sitting here nearly three decades hence, I still hate him, but from a different perspective, because he turned the Marriage of Christ into a horror. From where I now stand, "Oh Jesus, fuck me!" is a prayer sung by the Saints. Blammo!! Bagged another one.
I wonder what is the bounty on slain demons? Call me a bounty hunter.
16 comments:
Oddly enough as much of a 'physical coward' I am I have always loved to be spooked and scared -somewhat agree about the exorcist although for slightly different reasons -the story that the movie is based on is supposedly true and I have always wondered about that-it was very interesting -but its one of those things that I guess we will never know -best to you and Varen as always!
Michael! Afraid of monster movies? You wussy! LOL! I was raised on a diet of 'em, even allowed to start collecting the monster magazines of the late, great publisher of the now defunct Warren Magazines empire, Forrest J Ackerman, at the tender age of five.
http://www.famousmonsters.com/
These included TALES OF BLAZING COMBAT, MONSTER WORLD, FAMOUS MONSTERS OF FILMLAND (its revived version's website above), CREEPY, EERIE, and the born, slain, and reborn again undead tart of the galaxy, VAMPIRELLA. rest in peace, Uncle Forry, you changed the course of many a young boys life.
I only just found out from the JRR Tolkien cult documentary, "RINGERS: Lord of the Fans" (2005) that it was Mr Ackerman himself who had initially tried, albeit unsuccessfully, to get the Oxford educated storyteller's classic trilogy up on the Silver Screen decades before Peter Jackson's astronomically successful rendition.
Did you Gno, for instance, that in early drafts of "The Hobbit" that our diminutive hero with the oversized, hairy peds, Bilbo Baggins, was going to be named Bingo?
Back to Wm Blatty's Satanic gore fest. Don't forget that other beyond bearable Überobscene utterance, "You're mother sucks cocks in hell!" Dude! If she done does that, why, what's the diff WHERE one's family matriarch plies her trade as a fellatrix?!
http://www.exorthodoxforchrist.com/catholic_exorcisms_2.htm
An intriguing little site for the false promise of the efficacy of the Doctrines of Devils in Romanist (and other denominations's) excorcism rites.
What I'd like to Gno is, where'd Dr Gargoyle go? He was this cool demonologist who had a cool Byzantine (Eastern Orthodox) site, offering his talent as a cast-outter of Legion himself.
Another good possession flick you'll've no doubt missed is "STIGMATA" (1999), whose review is here:
http://www.moria.co.nz/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=3532Itemid=1
Starring TV's "Medium" star, Patricia Arquette as a Punk Rock beautician screaming invectives in Aramaic, the Son of Man's true native tongue, whilst levitating, eyes turning white, and, yup, bleeding those Five Wounds of Christ, it features rabidly Catholic crazy man director Ken Russell's Lord Byron from his "Gothic" tour de forc, Gabriel Byrne, as a priest concerned with our blonde heroine's welfare as well as the saving of the original Gnostic text, the Gospel of St Thomas, which the Holy City seeks to suppress.
I may no longer be an Episcopalian, Michael, but boy oh boy, Churchianity still intrigues me deeply.
Remember, HS can mean either Happy Sunday or its exact converse, Hail Satan!
See ya in Bible study,
Anadæ Effro ( :-)}
I'm sensitive and don't like the horror genre. The last time I was in a fight a person was drawing pictures of Mary getting fucked by a cross. I saw it and said, "yeah, fuck Mother Mary". Some other drunkard didn't care for that and tried to break his beer bottle over the table to stab me and failed, then started strangling me.
Is this the kind of Demon Hunting you are inferring. Am I supposed to be protesting and possibly fighting? Isn't life just a temporary illusion? I always thought if I ever came face to face with a Demon I should just give it some love.
Yes, I admit, I'm a scary movie wussy. Freddie really DOES give me nightmares. I love campy horror, but stuff like Silence of the Lambs... not. Anadae, where you find these little web gems I can only only guess.
James, that's quite a tale. What I'm trying to say is that overt sexual passion in relation to religious iconography mostly only surfaces as it's demonic opposite - something to be feared and projected outwards. But when I began to think of my sexual nature as something that God is intensely interested in, it's easy to put 2 and 2 together and to think of Jesus as my fuck buddy, my partner in sexual bliss - baiting the master. When I do that, the demon is "slain", or vanishes, or is transformed into a lover, take your pick.
Thanks James & Michael for your further contributions to this topic. I must emphasise that I, too, am sensitive, on several levels, and am not immune to the jousts of blasphemers. I'm deeply saddened by your ill treatment at that public house, but grateful for your take on Demon Hunting, for which you've my Bakunin-influenced gratitude.
Furthermore, Michael, I cannot expose my(s)elf to slasher films; I find them redundant & oft times gratuitous in their portrayal of ferocity. Also, speaking of horror, this film positively sent me into an abysmal depression, having seen it as a Sunday School kid. Talk about the debilitating affect of film. To paraphrase Satanist & indie filmmaker, Kenneth Anger, "Man's darkest hour was the day the cinema was invented!"
Also, speaking of Mr Krueger, a fellow bandmate from a three-decades-old Punk band I was in whose name is Screaming Mad George did the girl transforming into the giant cockroach special effects in the Dream Warriors sequel in that franchise.
Intriguingly enough, I, too, believe sexuality is an expression of the sacred, the Divine, not a devil-steered tic mark in the list of slights to the road to perdition.
To underscore that, I broke from the Church. My Tradition says that there's no need for a Priesthood, every man (and woman) is the Alter Christ, a direct bridge to our Creator.
Synchronistically (you fellow Synchromystics'll love this) my hubbs & I saw "Gamera: Guardian of the Universe" in which he's an antediluvian gentech construct devised to battle the Gyraos, a humongous pteradon-like race of monsters whose gormandising preference is Homo sapiens, but that goes back to your earlier article, Michael.
Watching a comedy tonight,
Anadæ Effro ( :-)}
I just got done watching Alan Moore video on Conspiracy Grimoire and Alan says, "In the 90's I met up with Melinda Gebbie and we decided we would like to work upon a major peice of erotica fiction together which has resulted in the forth coming Lost Girls and this entire drama is being played out against the background of Europe and specifically Austria in 1913 when everything is gearing towards the exact antithesis of sex. It's gearing up towards what humans do when they don't put their energies into sex which is kill each other. That the healthy sexual drive which is seizing most young men when they are in their teens is perverted by older men who perhaps have lost some of their sexual drive and all that sexual energy gets shipped over to somewhere like Flanders and is perverted into killing other young men. Energy that should be going into something honest like fucking instead diverted into something appauling like killing." Today before watching that I watched Felon with Val Kilmer and Stephen Dorff, when the two first met Val asked Stephen, "Which is it, do you want to fight or fuck?"
I didn't mean to offend you Anadæ and thank you both for your kind presence. Much love
How did you know it was a public house?
James and Anadae, I want to thank you both for your insightful comments - an unusually "profitable" thread. I occasionally read a gay blogger - Bill in Exile - who was a Marine. He says the Marines are privately called the "fighting faggots", which makes them quite obviously the modern Spartans. And while there is honor in all that brotherly camaraderie, it saddens me to think that maybe they are there because they are trying not be fags - their inner homophobia being used against them.
I think the army is the ultimate "ex-gay" ministry, promising to make a real man of you. Just take this gun...
Gamera! That was it. I loved how he pulled his legs in and fire shot out of his leg holes and he became a flying saucer! Definitely one of my favorite monsters!
I am late to the party on this one but that is just as well because the conversation you fine gentlemen were having might have been derailed somewhat by the comments I want to make - and the discussion on this one was great to read - so thanks Michael, Anadae, James, and Devin.
Anyhoo. . .
I managed to go thirty years without seeing the Exorcist myself - I was 10 when the movie came out and I can never forget the day that I first saw the promo for it on TV. It was the clip of Ellen Burstyn running frantically up the stairs into her daughters bedroom to find her daughters bed wildly slamming up and down. This one scene chilled me to the core.
Frightened me in a way I had never been before.
That very same night our parents were out and my oldest sister was left in charge; at some point she decided she needed something from upstairs, and commanded me to go upstairs and retrieve it.
I refused, imagining myself getting trapped up there alone - afraid that the lights would all go out - and I would be defenseless in the dark. I didn't voice my fears though, I simply said I did not want to.
But she prevailed, and I slowly took to the steps - barely able to breathe as I inched my way up.
What happened next is likely to be doubted by most (and I have not ever told this story till now), but the very instant my feet hit the top step, the entire house was plunged into darkness - the power had failed (there was no storm) and I was alone in the dark.
And my whole world broke somehow.
I can't explain this - a premonition? an evil force attacking? a trickster force believing it might entertain itself? A psychic projection from myself, powered by my fear, which killed the electricity?
????
It took a long time for me to move past this event - a year later I was still too traumatized by fear to go to bed without suffering severe anxiety. My sheets would be soaking-wet from the sweat of just lying there in fear every night.
And worse, I realize now, I never confided this to anyone - never sought re-assurances or comfort from a single soul. My mother most likely had discovered the Bible i had hidden away inside my pillow for protection, but as far as i knew I carried the burden of this all by myself for all that time alone.
It was only the Beautiful Shane who could convince me thirty years later to watch it with him. Nobody else could have convinced me to ever take a look at that film.
Beautiful Shane liked to fuel his art with a whiff of herb, and his suggestion we watch it with a bit of plant intelligence to guide us made me feel a bit better about it, and with him beside me i prepared to be plunged into the darkness again.
And gentlemen, the movie i watched that night had not a thing to do with demons nor devils, There was no possession, no exorcism, no Satan, or Power of God - - What i watched that night I experienced as a very straight-forward exposition of the horrors of Child sexual abuse.
The Thumping bed that had so undid me as a boy was in actuality the slamming of a bed during a violent rape.
Straight-forward from my perspective tho only - because the movie refused to allow that to be real - the mother's Director friend is cast from Regan's bedroom window - but the movie doesn't allow anyone to ask why the man was in the girls bedroom in the first place. The doctor tells Mom that her little girl cursed him and accused him of attempting something filthy - but the movie insists that a mother would just smirk in feigned embarrassment as though it were simple precociousness and neither she nor the doctor would ask what we in this real world would ask - Everything about Regan's behaviour would demand that a normal caregiver would consider how exactly this child's development had been interfered with. But not here.
They go running straight to the one institution that seems to have been built on the tradition of denying child sexual abuse.
The Church!
But the Exorcist never seems to be using Demonic possesion as a literary device to engage us in a discussion of ritual abuse - it instead seems to force itself as a smokescreen, something to only cloud the discussion further.
If we look back at the impact this film had at the time - the shocking imagery, the language, the viscous sexuality of what was a little girl, it seems now to me to have been conducting a mass Shock inducing spectacle - like a ritual itself - a magical working - but to what end??
During the movie I turned toward Beautiful Shane and said I suspected William Peter Blatty would have a hidden history - I bet him that Blatty would prove to have a connection to the Dark operations of some sort.
On that suspicion I spent the next day on the internet; and I proved my intuition right. William Peter Blatty did have a career first in the Intelligence agencies. Mind control would not have been a foreign subject to him in the least.
So what was this movie really about??
I would love to have some discussion from all of you and thanks for your thoughts.
david
The Exorcist is a pedophile's defense testimony. It is the most despicable and disgusting movie ever made. The entire film is adolescent sexuality viewed through the eyes of a sexual psychopath who hates children and hates women. It has inspired hundreds perhaps thousands of child murders over the past thirty five years.
Blatty worked for the USIA which inspired him to write Twinkle Twinkle Killer Kane about a mental hospital for Vietnam vets.
Seen for the repugnant tour de force that it is, yes, I concur with Christopher, it IS, indeed, "most despicable and disgusting". I well recall, as an eight year old, a nervous breakdown induced by the 1961 British novel-to-screen rendition of "The Lord of the Flies".
Thanks, too, for mentioning Blatty's Nam vet loony bin tale, which I'd forgotten about having seen.
Monsieur Fut in the Hat Stewart, your revelatory retelling was heartrending, but the fairy Hope at the avalanche of demonic outporing from Pandora's box. I'll speak to you elsewhere. Thanks for bearing your soul.
Speaking of plan(e)t consciousness, does anyone have an update on our favourite little Dakini Dancer? I wuzz just(ice) Wundering.
Tending to my Garden,
Anadæ Effro ( :-)}
David - now THAT'S a comment. Better than the original article by far! The way you clearly show - it is essentially a tale of ritual sexual child abuse, and sending in the Jesuits is like sending wolves into the hen house.
As it happens, I have a wonderful friend that I know through work, who has shared a little of his own boyhood experience in the tender care of the priests, which makes The Exorcist almost appear tame in comparison.
A black "mass" magic ritual? In these kinds of movies, the demons are always powerful and the Priests are always weak and ineffectual. Hardly the triumphant Saints of the book of Acts. More disempowerment programming?
David - Off topic, but since I have your attention I wanted to point you to my only bit of creative fiction here at Gosporn - The Space Bro's. Thought you might enjoy it.
Cheers, Michael
Thanks for the comments guys - I get sad when i think of that 10-11 year old boy suffering that terror alone for long - I couldn't bear to think of my nieces or nephews enduring the same thing in silence . . . . wish I could go backwards and fix things for the little guy, and wouldn't mind getting mr Blatty alone for a little bit as well.
Cheers
and thanks for the link to the story Michael - I loved it! and left a comment there as well
David - your comments have been most welcome here, thanks so much for your presence. I left a comment back at the Space Bro's.
Cheers, Michael
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