‘Exorcist’ still impressive > Modern copycats don’t live up to original’s precedent

In Theaters

THE EXORCIST: THE VERSION YOU’VE NEVER SEEN Directed by William Friedkin. Written by William Peter Blatty, based on his novel. 132 minutes. Rated R.

In 1973, smack in the middle of a tumultuous political environment that saw the fall of a U.S. president and our country caught in the throes of war, came William Friedkin’s “The Exorcist,” a horror film like none other that would go on to be denounced by Billy Graham, championed by the Catholic church, embraced by film critics and finally by the Academy Awards, where it won two of 10 nominations.

The film came during the last golden age of Hollywood, a time when it wasn’t rare for artistry to take precedent over box office receipts. It was groundbreaking, a movie that shook audiences with its depiction of Regan (Linda Blair), a sweet 12-year-old girl whose soul is gradually – then violently – possessed by the devil.

“The Exorcist,” recently re-released with 11 minutes of additional footage, is about the discovery of religious faith. Everything that happens to Regan – the head spinning, the projectile vomiting, the levitations, the infamous (and never-before-seen) “spider walk,” those blasphemous, bloody plunges with the crucifix and her remarkably raunchy mouth (beautifully dubbed by Mercedes McCambridge) – is windowdressing.

Indeed, this film isn’t so much about Regan’s transformation as it is about the transformation of her mother and the priest who eventually comes to help them.

Played superbly by Ellen Burstyn, Regan’s mother, Chris MacNeil, a popular movie star shooting a film on location in Georgetown, is a woman who finds herself caught between the concrete world of medical science and the more foreign world of religion, which she only turns to once she’s sought the help of “88 doctors” and is desperate to try anything to save her daughter.

When it’s suggested to her that Regan should have an exorcism, Chris, stunned, turns to Father Karras (Jason Miller), a man fighting his own demons after his mother died alone in her home. With its relationships established, the film then becomes Chris and Karras’ journey into themselves with Regan’s possession used as the catalyst for change and personal reawakening.

Aside from the performances, which are uniformly strong, especially Linda Blair’s, which borders on brilliance (consider the range she displays as Regan), what’s so terrific about “The Exorcist” is how the film is in no hurry to get to the meat of its horror. It isn’t exploitative. First and foremost, it’s about its characters, people we come to care about before their lives are viciously torn apart on screen.

This is one of the reasons the film became a classic. Before Regan ever blew pea soup out of her mouth or flipped about on a bed, audiences had a strong sense of who she and her mother were. For those who believed in what they were seeing – and there were those in 1973 who absolutely believed – there was the lingering, creepy sense that this could happen to them.

The additional footage doesn’t add much to the experience – the padded ending, in fact, lessens the original ending’s punch – but “The Exorcist” nevertheless is a must-see. It changed movies forever and stands as a rare original, one whose influence continues to be seen today in such films as “Lost Souls.”

Grade: A

LOST SOULS Directed by Janusz Kaminski. Written by Pierce Gardner. 102 minutes. Rated R.

Janusz Kaminski’s “Lost Souls,” from a script by Pierce Gardner, is a perfect example of what “The Exorcist” left in its wake – 27 years of cheap imitations that completely misunderstand what made Friedkin’s film work.

The film, which is about a tedious series of demonic possessions and exorcisms as experienced by a tedious group of people we never come to know, only gets the glitz of its tantalizing subject matter and none of the depth.

It’s the very worst sort of knock-off – one that’s not only poorly acted and produced, but one that has zero interest its characters and only a passing understanding of the theology it’s trying to copy.

What a handful of people at my screening would have seen if they hadn’t stormed out in a disappointed huff, is a film about a man (Ben Chaplin’s Peter Kelson) who will become the antichrist on his 33rd birthday (at 4:55 p.m.!) simply because he was born of incest. Maya (Winona Ryder), a smoky-eyed mess of nerves who’s something of a success story for exorcisms, will have none of that, and makes it her business to try to convince Peter that he’d better watch out – Satan’s coming to town for his soul.

With Ryder somehow worse than she was in “Autumn in New York” and Chaplin delivering what’s easily the year’s most vacuous performance, “Lost Souls” is so bad and so misguided on so many levels, I wanted to write everyone in attendance a check for $8 and tell them to do themselves a favor-use it for a ticket to “The Exorcist.”

Grade: F

Christopher Smith is the Bangor Daily News film critic. His reviews appear Mondays in Style and Thursdays in The Scene.