Before I go any further, I would love to make the argument that William Peter Blatty lived The American Dream. Sure, a ton of authors have written bestsellers and earned reputations that have lasted centuries, but there is one detail about him that never ceases to impress me. It’s the type of moment that makes you realize that you’re doing the whole writer’s game wrong. If I can, very quickly, explain how it is that the author of “The Exorcist” started his writing career by managing not to have a job at all.
Sure, that sounds bad and feels like an origin story you’d give to someone like J.K. Rowling in the Mid-90s. However, I promise you that this has a happy ending. With a college education in tow, Blatty once appeared on You Bet Your Life and won his episode. Having won $10,000, he was able to quit his job and focus on writing full-time.
As anyone who has had to juggle a 9 to 5 (or even a freelance career) with writing novels, you will recognize why this is such an amazing and envious task. It takes hours and for some years to tap out a novel that could have any meaningful impact on the bigger zeitgeist. For me, I’m still trying to reach that point, though I’m sure winning on a game show would help me take those risks with greater advantage. As a lifelong fan of Jeopardy!, I’ve always imagined having any luck on that show, even if I’m sure I’d be a perpetual third-place holder for all three rounds.
So yes, in some respects you’d almost expect “The Exorcist” to open with a blurb thanking Groucho Marx. Sure it would throw the whole tone of the novel off, but there is some truth to it. While it’s likely that he would’ve written the book without winning on the game show, I doubt that his origin story would be anywhere as interesting.
Though I’m sure that “The Exorcist” would’ve been a phenomenon either way. While most are likely to be familiar with the film and its subsequent franchise, I’d make an argument that the book goes even further into the depths of hell with a story so demented that you feel consumed by the horror. It’s what good writing does for you. It internalizes itself, forcing you to reread passages, hoping that you understood that last sentence correctly. It’s vulgar, capturing a real sense of demonic possession that makes you uncomfortable. Pitting that with Catholicism and a need for atonement turned it into a masterpiece, easily one of the greatest horror novels I’ve read from the 20th century.
I will confess that as a Catholic, The Exorcist (1973) as a film has always been intriguing to me. In a broad sense, I’ve long considered it one of the few Catholic superhero stories in history, finding the church coming through in a meaningful way. It’s the doubt of the priests, wondering if they’re capable of using their spirituality to overcome a demon. By the time of the actual exorcising, director William Friedkin has built up so much tension and energy that I have trouble not being on the edge of my seat. It isn’t just how real it looks. There is this implicit part of my very identity that wants to see good bring justice to the world. It means the world to me, and it’s what feels genuine about the story, even if you can argue that there are aspects that work more as schlock.
It’s a story that comes with sacrifices, finding innocence grappling with corruption in these vile ways. I love what the film achieves, and I promise you that the book does an equally great job, forcing you to live more in the dread. For those who can tolerate such blasphemous language, it actually becomes the ultimate story of saving your soul, the need to believe that humanity is worthy of saving. The priests have this power, this patience to overcome every obstacle. I’m personally surprised that the film did so well because of how grotesque the whole project is. Then again, that’s why it works – being a shameless horror movie rooted in a series of personal fears.
Another important thing to consider when understanding the novel and film’s success is to notice the shifting culture of the time. This was 1971, coming off of a counterculture revolution where there was a constant fear that your children were going to be baseless hippies. They were losing their morals, smoking dope, and hanging around in interracial cultures. It’s the type of fear that drove culture so well that it’s why horror movies thrived from this time.
Once you notice it, I think it places The Exorcist in a familiar company. Rosemary’s Baby (1968) was the fear of giving birth to the Antichrist. The Omen (1976) was the fear that your son was the Antichrist. Considering that The Exorcist centers around a possessed child, you begin to see this demoralizing plot starting to emerge once again in unpleasant ways. In some ways, they were the best religious films because they existed in a battle that everyone faced with trying to do right in the community only to find these threats coming from within. It was the belief that there were spiritual forces at play, and that, with The Vietnam War going on, you could solve the problems before the world blew up.
Though if there’s one underrated detail about Blatty’s novel, it’s this sense of personality that he uses to balance out his sinister subject. There are whole scenes where it breaks free from the darkness and finds characters having genuine conversations about going to the movies, finding the simple joys in life as they wander around. Having an actress on campus doing a movie only helps to make the cinematic language feel more in place, even if I’d argue it’s the most superfluous detail in the whole narrative. It almost doesn’t matter what the mother does. The daughter, Regan, promises to overshadow the whole story.
It’s a slow build that I can understand how we reach the eventual thunderclap of peril. It comes in small details, like an infection spreading throughout the body. At first, you think that it’s manageable, that the bad behavior will go away. However, without treatment, it will only get worse, leading to the inevitable third act. It forces one to ask if temptation can be controlled, or if we’re all in need of atonement at some point, having to have it exorcised in brutal fashion. There’s no arguing that the devil will be totally gone even after the story has ended. Blatty wrote a whole book about that. A whole franchise is based around that.
But there is plenty of reason to argue that this was the most emblematic horror movie of its time. There was a limited amount of directions that Rosemary’s Baby could go for a sequel. The Omen would, in theory, resolve itself. But The Exorcist was not about Regan. It was about this unseen force that wanders the globe, causing terror to anyone who comes within contact. I still remember the horrific imagery of the devil vandalizing statues at the start of the movie. As a teenager, I thought it was a needless scene. As I grow older, I understand what the anticipation and build was for. You couldn’t possibly believe that it would escape third-world environments and make it to the highly sophisticated cultures.
Again, it all plays into fears that may sound a bit too xenophobic if you read too much into it. However, I think the idea that this is a global nightmare is something that has come back into fashion thanks to COVID-19. There is that worry that an unknown force will kill us all, and I think it’s why the novel works. How do you destroy something that lurks inside of yourself, taking away your motor functions and rewiring your brain? So much of the story works because of how plausible this fear is. It’s why numerous movies have used this plot to even more artistic advantages with exciting results.
Because of my obsession with this story, I find myself also intrigued by another aspect of the film. Every now and then I will come across a scholar who argues that the medical practices are even more horrifying than the demonic possession. Sure those people are crazy, but it makes sense when you watch it, seeing these needles injecting of a little girl as she cries in pain, hearing doctors complain about Regan’s foul language. It’s the idea that science can’t solve this problem, and you have to wonder what it’s doing to her. While I am a man who respects science, this religious fantasy definitely is full of itself in the best ways possible.
In a lot of respects, Blatty remains a one-hit wonder. It’s true that he continued to make novels, even directing The Exorcist III (1990) at one point, but for the rest of his career, he would be known as the man who taught the world to fear the demon inside. While it’s lead to some irrational people who believe they can be heroes by placing their hand to a forehead and saying “Demon be gone!” there is something timeless about this story. It’s why The Exorcist as a film franchise is really crazy, taking random turns that at points have nothing to do with the original novel. By the time you get to Dominion: Prequel to The Exorcist (2005), its connections begin to look near unrecognizable.
There is one side note that I want to include before closing this out. Upon the time of the film’s release, Friedkin complained that a theater in Long Beach, CA had acquired an illegal print of the film and was profiting off of it. It leads to a lot of conflict between the filmmaker and the city, though he would return there eventually for To Live and Die in L.A. (1985). Even then, he remains critical of Long Beach and once called the city “boring.” As much as I respect the man, it’s a sticking point I have with him.
Then again, he’s so entangled in The Exorcist legacy that he released a Netflix film called The Devil and Father Amorth (2017) that was supposed to be a documentary about a real exorcism. To his credit, THAT scene was compelling. The issue is that everything around it proved how flimsy the concept was and any attempt to prove how much actuality this phenomenon had backfired. It’s a dull documentary, trust me. Still, paired with the Fox TV series The Exorcist, it’s amazing how this story will just not go away.
As for Blatty himself, I am amazed by the legacy he has created. However, I am a bit confused about one aspect, and it’s something that makes me second-guess my admiration for his work. For anyone who’s familiar with the propaganda title Hillary’s America (2016), it comes with a very specific quote. At the top of it is a blurb from “The producer of The Exorcist” Mr. William Peter Blatty that says “Utterly terrifying.” Considering the lack of buzz around this, I am wondering if it’s even real and if so what it says about him as a person. I am not saying this for political reasons, but the filmmaker has a whole host of ethical issues lobbied against him, favoring bias over reason, and doing little besides spreading fear.
Sure, it’s what “The Exorcist” did: spread fear. However, there was some reason and hope behind how Blatty wrote about it. There was some sense of validity that made you believe in this fantasy. I can’t figure out if that quote is real or if it even was supposed to be a good review. Utterly terrifying has multiple meanings, and I feel like it could go in endless directions if it at all was about this work. Given its invalid criticism in certain fields, I wouldn’t doubt it. Still, if it’s true, I worry that I either got conned by a very good book, or he just lost his mind. Still, he captured the religious paranoia better than just about anyone else, and for that, I thank him for making every Halloween season a little more exciting.
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