William Peter Blatty’s novel arrived when the supernatural could still deliver a shock
” is, from a certain angle, a bonfire of his vanities. The epigraph page alone gestures toward the Gospel of Luke, Cosa Nostra murders, communist atrocities and, for anyone still slow off the mark, Dachau, Auschwitz and Buchenwald. Step right up, folks, it’s Evil.After that gaudy show of metaphysical leg, the main surprise of the novel is how slowly it burns.
Ah, Regan. When first we meet her, she is cuddling a stuffed panda named Pookey. She has red ponytails and braces and a “soft, shining face full of freckles,” and she tells her mother things like, “Oh, I love you!” Such wholesomeness cannot stand. The build again is slow: strange rappings in the attic, a Ouija board, a fantasy playmate, desecrations at the local church. Before you know it, Regan is urinating in front of guests, swearing, screaming, kicking, writhing.
Begin with that “I’m the devil” declaration, which, with its definite article, prompts readers and viewers to conclude that Satan himself has checked in, Airbnb-style, to that Prospect Street rowhouse. But, as Blatty has already made clear in his evocative prologue, the demon is Pazuzu, a minor figure from Assyrian mythology whose main job was to harness the southwestern wind.
The questions can’t be resolved because Blatty never entirely entertains them, and it is time now, perhaps, to pay homage to a more secular deity: Ira Levin, whose 1967 novel, “,” and its film adaptation so robustly established the mass-market potential of devils and maidens.
Friedkin was smart enough to get the Catholic Church on board by casting two Jesuits in the film and berserk enough to punch one of them in the face to get a better performance. Shooting consumed more than 15 months and ran well past the original $12 million budget, in part because special effects in that pre-CGI era had to be created mechanically. Today, the breath clouds elicited by Regan’s arctic bedroom could be digitally added; back then, they demanded a $50,000 air-conditioning unit.
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