The Last Horror Movie That Scared Me
The Exorcist III got me.
When I was a kid, horror movies were effectively horrifying. I saw an ad once when I was 8 or so for some movie about a monster under the bed and couldn’t sleep for weeks (I remember my dad declaring in hyperbolic but understandable frustration, “We are never letting you watch television again!”) In middle school we watched the old silent Nosferatu because our teacher didn’t want to deal with us for the day and I was afraid to walk home at 3 in the afternoon with the sun out. If the perfect horror movie viewer is a horror movie viewer who is horrified, then I was that perfect viewer.
Time staggered on, as it does. I eventually got to sleep and the walk home from middle school ended. I became an actual horror movie fan, who could tell a Carpenter from a Cronenberg and a Nosferatu from that other Nosferatu. Along the way I stopped being scared to such an extent that it sometimes startles me to realize that, yes, other people actually want to be scared by their horror movies. One of the criticisms of 2020’s wonderful Candyman was that it wasn’t scary enough. To which my immediate reaction was, “But…horror movies are never scary?” The film was beautiful and ugly and bloody-minded and bleak. What more could you ask? Bad dreams?
Recently, though, I rewatched The Exorcist III, and remembered that, oh right, I used to have bad dreams too.
I first saw The Exorcist III in the early 1990s, not long after it came out. I’d just moved to the big city for grad school; I knew no one and was living alone in a tiny apartment. I didn’t have cable or a VCR, just a tiny black and white television. Out of desperation and loneliness I’d sometimes watch whatever was on. And one night I flipped the knob and there was The Exorcist III.
Thirty years later, some of director William Blatty’s images are still burned into my brain. The shot down the hallway where the nurse walks across the screen, oblivious to the masked figure with the pointed pole stalking after her. The girl being pulled out of the way as the giant hospital cutters close where her neck was. And the wonderfully eerie scene with the elderly woman crawling around the ceiling, a demonic grin on her face, as the detective played by George C. Scott looks about obliviously, wondering where the demon’s gotten to.
Rewatching, I think my estimation of the film was probably boosted by the fact that I didn’t see all of it. At full length it’s a muddled tangle of plots and themes, sort of about serial killers, sort of about losing yourself as you get old, sort of about pointlessly revisiting the first Exorcist. But I missed the beginning. And, even better, I missed the unfortunate tacked on ending. The studio disliked the first cut, which didn’t include an exorcism. How can you have an Exorcist movie without an exorcism?! So they added a big special effects blowout with lightning and the floor splitting open and so forth. It’s silly and clumsy. Eight-year-old me would have been scared, sure. But even he probably would have thought, “This is no Nosferatu.”
I don’t remember why I turned The Exorcist III off before the end. I do remember that the movie disturbed me though. I glanced up at least once or twice at the low ceiling to see if there were any smiling old people maybe crawling around up there, waiting to get their teeth in my throat.
There were not then. And this time, thirty years later, when I finally watched the whole thing, even to the crappy ending, I knew there weren’t old people on the ceiling without looking. The only old person in the room was me. Age brings wisdom, or at least indifference.
Which isn’t a bad thing. I doubt I’d be a horror fan in the same way if I actually found horror movies scary the way I did when I was younger; part of getting aged and crotchety is that I really don’t like losing sleep.
Still it’s an odd feeling to realize that a certain part of who you were has been exorcised and banished. Between the first watch of the Exorcist III and the second, someone else has possessed me. That doesn’t make me afraid. Just, perhaps, a little haunted.
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This ran at Splice Today some years back.
I never saw any of the Exorcist movies, but I read the original book when I was about 12. It was one of those things where I knew I’d regret reading it because it’s so darn creepy and hair-standing-up-on-the-back-of-your-neck scary, but I couldn’t put it down. Very well written. So evocative. And having a little girl about my age as the center of the plot was too enticing to look away. I think what’s so interesting about “The Exorcist” is the willingness to believe there are demons and devils. In the world the author creates, it’s completely believable. Same goes for “The Omen” which also has an underlying theme of Catholicism and the opposing forces of good and evil. And speaking of “The Omen”, the original movie with Gregory Peck was a horror masterpiece. Scared the living daylights out of me.
Damn, Noah, excellent essay! I think that as we grow up, we might lose that ability to be carried away completely. Like the frontal lobe finally develops enough to override the terror that some stories induce. I remember reading King’s “Tommyknockers” when I was 16, and I was terrified all the time. During the day with the lights on. I reread it in my 20s and it didn’t have the same effect. Sure it was creepy- there are images still stuck in my brain from the first reading- but not terrifying. You close the book or turn off the tv, and real life is right there.
Thank you for helping me reflect. Happy Friday.