It's Andy Fish!

Above- Actress Eileen Dietz who appears very briefly as the visage of the demon who possesses Regan MacNeil.

Actress Chris MacNeil is in Washington DC, the beautiful area around the Georgetown University area to be exact, filming a movie on campus. She’s rented a house and brought along with her a pair of servants, a personal assistant and her 12 year old daughter. Recently having divorced Regan’s father MacNeil is hoping to provide as normal a home as possible while her own home back in Los Angeles is being built. We can assume Chris is hoping after wrapping her film, and taking Regan to Europe for a trip that they will return to California to start their new family life.

Regan is a pretty average 12 year old, or at least a pretty average 12 year old who is cared for by a nanny and has two servants at her disposal and her mom is a pretty well known actress, although it would appear she has not his movie star status yet.

Regan spends time in the basement of the house where she discovers a Quija board and through that it is implied that she connects to a demon who refers to himself as Captain Howdy when he (or they) talk to Regan.

Regan begins to show some behavioral changes and soon enough she’s outright possessed and Chris seeks out the help of a nearby Priest, Father Karras, who is struggling with his own faith because he feels he’s abandoned his aged mother who lives in a tenement in the Bronx alone and sickly. Had he become a private Psychiatrist instead of a Priest one, his uncle reminds him, she would be living on Park Avenue.

So there is the stress, the conflict and the guilt, all of which feed the demon. Karras is in over his head so the Bishop calls in Father Lancaster Merrin to lead the Exorcism. Along the way comes Lt Kinderman as the detective to solve the murderous goings on around the MacNeil house.

I also recently re-read the book, and the movie is a pretty straightforward adaption of it– I’d actually say a rare case of the film being better because director William Friedkin did some editing to keep the story moving and taut.

Like Michael Keaton’s Beetle Juice says “I’ve seen The Exorcist 65 times…” and actually I think I have him beat. I like the dialogue between characters in this movie so much I tend to put it one while I’m writing conversations to get that natural flow.

It’s an excellent movie and I think it deserves higher than it’s 8.2 rating on IMDB but it has its flaws. More on that in a minute.

Whenever I mention the movie everyone always asks me how did the demon get from Iraq to America and how did it possess Regan and what is it’s connection to Father Merrin?

The movie opens in Northern Iraq where Father Merrin is overseeing an archaeological dig and a trinket is found– it’s the demon Pazuzu who is both the demon of the wind and in some folklore a protector of folks against other demons. As Merrin leaves Iraq a windstorm kicks up and we see the ominous shape of the demon where we can infer he has been freed and is now in the amulet. Merrin and Pazuzu have a history as is revealed later in the film as the Bishop and the president of Georgetown discuss bringing him in for Regan’s exorcism, but the demon is never specifically mentioned.

The demon itself calls out for Merrin several times before his arrival, so ladies and gentlemen we have a relationship born not of LOVE CONNECTION but of proximity. Merrin returns to America where he sequesters himself to write a book–meanwhile Regan, who is suffering the sorrow of her parents divorce, the loss of her childhood home, the relocation across the country without her friends, is in a condition where a friendly demon calling himself Captain Howdy from a Quija board could certainly make the jump into the little girl.

Flaws- not many– but Regan’s physical transformation seems to come pretty quickly, there’s a point where even the most skeptical visitor would take one look at that face step out of the room and say she’s possessed, yet many of our smarter characters are slow to see this.

The Theatrical Cut is superior to the Director Cut in my opinion, the Director cut restores the Spider Walk Regan does down the stairs pretty early in the film, and if THAT doesn’t convince you this girl is possessed nothing will.

Spoiler flaws – read at your own risk- it’s established that if the host body dies then the demon is vanquished, yet Regan’s head turns around 360 degrees which would certainly have killed her.

If you’ve read the sequel or seen the filmed version of it THE EXORCIST III: LEGION then this whole theory goes out the window because we’ll soon learn that Father Karras doesn’t die in the fall nor does Pazuzu leave his body, making the absolution scene at the end pointless.

It’s worth nothing that director Friedkin had no interest in filming the sequel so EXORCIST Novelist and Screenwriter William Peter Blatty took it upon himself to do it- I may get into that one another time but let’s just say Blatty is nowhere near the director Friedkin was.