If memory serves, I originally caught THE EXORCIST (1973) in the early 1980s which was the foerst possible time. I’d seen it parodied, talked about and knocked off over the previous decade so even though I’d never seen it before, I was quite familiar with it (much the way even people who’ve never read Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde know the basics of the story). It felt old hat.
TYG, however, is a huge fan, so when the Carolina Theatre showed it last weekend, I took her to it for our date. I’m glad I did because know I can appreciate it much better.
I imagine you already know the story: Chris McNeil (Ellen Burstyn) is a single mom whose daughter, Regan (Linda Blair) starts acting irrationally — peeing on the carpet in public, cussing (raw even by modern standards) and somehow making her bed vibrate and jump up and down when she sits on it. When medical research finds nothing wrong, Chris slowly embraces the supernatural solution. Her daughter’s possessed — can she find an exorcist to help?
What’s striking about the movie (and may have hurt it when I first watch it) is how leisurely it is. The first 40 minutes or so have Chris coping with everyday life; Father Damien (Jason Miller), a burned-out priest coping with his loss of faith and his mother’s deteriorating health; and shots of Father Lankester (Max von Sydow) at a dig in the Middle East where something strange is happening. No attempt to explain how it all ties together. Focusing on Damien’s and Chris’s personal arcs. It’s good but I think it’s very much a product of it’s time — I’m not sure anyone would make a horror movie that way today. And the Father Lankaster scenes, while eerie, don’t fit in with the rest of the movie; I had to turn to TYG, who’s read the book, to explain them.
It’s also of it’s time in that exorcism is treated as something exotic, strange and rare. In future horror movies it would become as common as stakes in a vampire film — that’s what happens when a film tries something new and succeeds. The film deserves it’s rep; however I recommend this article pointing out how the Catholic Church of horror cinema diverges from the abuses the church committed in real life (which might make The Devil’s Doorway a good double-feature with The Exorcist). “I’m the Devil. Now kindly undo these straps.”
MALIBU BIKINI SHOP (1986) was another TYG date pick, having been a VHS favorite of her and her brother in their teen years. It’s the kind of sex comedy familiar to anyone watching movies on cable or movies in that era: lots of T&A, some male misbehavior (the changing rooms at the eponymous store have two-way mirrors) and some romance — finding true love is better than hedonism though hedonism is better than being a stodgy straight arrow like Alan (Michael David Wright).
Alan’s a business major engaged to Jane (Debra Blee), an unattractive, over-eating whiner; Alan wants to make it on his own, Jane sees no reason not to get him a job with her rich father’s company, have daddy give them a house and so on.
Then Alan and his free-spirited, party animal brother Todd (Bruce Greenwood) learn their aunt has just died in a drunken jet-ski accident and they’ve inherited her swimwear shop in Malibu. Alan wants to sell the shop and get back to his life; Todd sees a new life. Can they come to agreement? Will meeting sexie salesclerk Ronnie (Barbara Horan) help Alan decide?
It’s a sexist film (you can probably tell) and doesn’t balance its handling of Alan and Todd; Alan learns to loosen up but it seems like Todd needs to grow up, and he never does. All that said, it’s a pleasant enough comedy, though a lot of the pleasure is the amount of eye candy on screen. “And here I thought you were a brain surgeon!”
CHARADE (1963) completely captivated me the first time I saw it but has never worked as well since — director Stanley Donen never quite gets the rom-com/thriller balance right the way Hitchcock did with North by Northwest. However it does work—the script is good, the cast is amazing.
The film opens with a train approaching, then a man falls off dead (on the commentary track, Donen discusses the shooting on location and waiting for the train to capture on film). His wife Regina (Audrey Hepburn) is upset, but not terribly as their marriage was on the rocks. She’s a lot more upset when three psychos (Ned Glass, George Kennedy, James Coburn) show up demanding something he stole which they’re convinced she has. A CIA official (Walter Matthau) explains the quartet hijacked a load of gold the Allies sent to the French resistance in WW II; Regina’s husband escaped with it while the other three were captured by Nazis and spent time in a POW camp. They’re very determined to get their share and think she has it. As Reggie tries to figure it out, can handsome Peter Joshua (Cary Grant) help? Or does he have his own agenda? Light and charming, this is definitely worth the time (the commentary with Donen and scriptwriter Peter Stone is good too). “That is not exactly the term I would have chosen but it does sort of capture the spirit of the thing.”
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