This Event has Passed
The Exorcist (1973)
Directed by William Friedkin from a screenplay by William Peter Blatty, and based on Blatty’s novel, The Exorcist was the first horror film to be nominated for the Academy Award for Best Picture. Regan (Linda Blair) is the 12-year-old daughter of actress Chris MacNeil (Ellen Burstyn). When Regan begins to exhibit strange symptoms — erratic behavior, mysterious illness, violent outbursts — standard medical tests show nothing. But as Regan’s crisis escalates, leading to the death of one of Chris’s friends, she has nowhere to turn but to a priest/psychiatrist of her acquaintance who suggests an unorthodox course of treatment: an exorcism, to evict the demon that has taken over poor Regan’s body.
Everything, everything about this movie ended up famous. From its troubled, seemingly cursed production to its religious opposition, from its shocking practical effects to its infamous “secret messages”, it’s rare for a horror film to insinuate itself so fully into the cultural imagination — The Shining comes to mind (which, to pre-empt a few emails, was unfortunately unavailable for booking this year), and Silence of the Lambs, and Psycho. It’s a short list. But The Exorcist started setting records the moment it released. Audiences of all sorts, not just core horror audiences, found its extremity, its grotesquerie, spellbinding. Like The Shining, like Silence of the Lambs, so many other stories appear tucked away in its convolutions. It’s rich and vast and harrowing in its intensity, just as much today as 52 years ago.
VIEW the rest of the 2025 “A Nightmare on Franklin Street” series lineup at https://tampatheatre.org/movie-categories/nightmare/
Event Links
Website: https://go.evvnt.com/3292245-0
Tickets: https://go.evvnt.com/3292245-1
