Word: exorcist
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...BEEN A year since the big stir over Last Tango in Paris. This year the commotion is over The Exorcist, and it's a more honest fuss over a less honest movie. People see The Exorcist because they want to be scared. They want to feel the emotion of the movie, and they say so. But people who saw Last Tango in Paris hid behind critical pretension. Not many people would admit they wanted to see the movie to feel the sex, the passion and the hate it contained. The audience, like the critics, thought its role was to decide...
...others who have seen the film experience nightmares, hysteria and an undefined, but nevertheless profound apprehension. "It is dangerous for people with weak ego control," explains Dr. Vladimir Piskacek, a Manhattan sociologist and psychiatrist, "but it would not cause psychosis." Small children may suffer from hallucinations after seeing The Exorcist, but Dr. Piskacek doubts that the film would permanently impair even an immature mind...
...problems by magic instead of by rational solutions is destructive. I lived through this before Hitler came to power. He said, 'Listen to the language of your pure Germanic blood, your unconscious.' The Jews in Germany then became the devil to be exorcised. The only thing The Exorcist can do," Dr. Mosse concludes emphatically, "is to pull young people down to a primitive level...
Meantime, from Aspen, Colo., where he is at work on "another theological thriller," The Exorcist's author, William Peter Blatty, grumbled: "I'm sick of hearing that the movie is a success because of a rediscovery of the occult. A thousand or more books have been written on the occult in the last ten years-they've each sold about ten copies." Blatty acknowledges that The Exorcist was plagued by a "series of disasters": halfway through the filming, fire destroyed the set, and the man who was playing the director died. But he notes: "There has been...
...Even more horrifying movies may now be under consideration. Exorcist Director William Friedkin commented before his film opened: "I think The Exorcist will be a bellwether. If it wins a wide audience, that may give the studios courage to handle more ambitious themes with more graphic scenes...