A psyche forever scarred...

December 24th, 1973 was a truly eventful day for me yet I had no idea why until February, 1974. Although I really don't remember the exact date I do remember it was in February of 74' when my father and I took our usual weekly jaunt to the local bijou (The Loew's American. Just off of 149th st in the Bronx). This was a trip we took twice weekly as back in those days theaters would have new double (even triple) features twice weekly, on Tuesdays & Fridays. My dad and I spent a lot of good times in the late 60's and first half of the 70's going to the movies, we would walk a few blocks twice weekly and generally see whatever was playing at either the American or The Bronx Theater (Which was a block away). It's safe to say that I saw way too many movies filled with monsters, bodies caked in blood, drug use, prostitutes and their pimps, car chases, car wrecks, foul language, Godzilla and the gang and naked women....lots and lots of naked women that were doing unspeakable things to their bodies with men and with other women too. I can truthfully say I've seen it all regarding exploitation films, the good, the bad and all of the ones in between. My dad was cool that way I guess. He didn't mind what was on the screen as long as he knew that I knew it was all fake, just a bunch of actors pretending to do all sorts of things to each other while battling monsters or doing drugs, driving cars really fast, etc...etc. So I was always sitting next to him, happily chewing on some popcorn & sipping a soft drink as we both reveled in whatever ridiculousness was playing on the big screen in front of us. I was sitting in theaters alongside my dad from the age of five and whatever was being featured on the marquee was what we watched. I love my dad for giving me the love of film that I have today (He gave me Type 2 Diabetes as well but that's for another column...).

So what was I to think when on that fateful day in February of 74' we took our usual walk to the theater to see the latest flick? I distinctly remember my dad being excited because a film called "The Exorcist" was playing and it was supposed to be the scariest film ever produced. Now I was but a youngster at the time (10 years old) but I had already seen dozens of movies that made the same claim. Some were actually pretty scary and I can remember one time in particular when Hammer's "Dracula Has Risen From The Grave"(1968) had frightened me so badly that I cried and begged my father to take me home. But I was only 5 years old then, I was five years older now and had seen a lot of so called "Scary Movies" since then. What horrors could a film with a title I didn't even understand possibly hold for me? Little did I know.....

We got to the theater a bit late on that fateful day and actually missed quite a bit of the opening third of the film. We might have gotten in a bit earlier but my dad was aghast at the exorbitant $3.00 ticket price. My ticket was $2.00 and the thought of paying $5.00 for two movie tickets was just unheard of (It usually cost $1.75 for him and $1.25 for me), but theater management knew they had themselves a cash cow with this movie so they raised their prices for this "Exclusive" run. After a good 20 minutes of complaining to whomever would listen to him my dad finally paid for two tickets and we bought our popcorn & soda as usual as we entered the theater. I can still smell the aroma of the popcorn if I think about it to this day. Remember...there were no multiplexes back then, just one big 400 seat auditorium and a 100 seat balcony looming above it. The concession stand was just outside of the auditorium doors and the smell of hot dogs and popcorn would continuously waft throughout the aisles for the duration of the show. I'd always insist on a box of Jordan Almonds to go along with my popcorn as well, those candy covered nuts made me so fucking happy back then. Anyways....we found that there were no seats available in the main auditorium, all of them were taken. This was a peculiar phenomenon to me as I'd never seen every seat occupied before on our weekly movie trips. So we headed to the balcony, where we had never had to go before. I remember the cheap red carpeting on the stairs leading to the upper level and the screams that had begun to echo both up & down the stairway as we ascended upward. I had never been to a movie where the audience had such a visceral reaction. What on earth could have been happening on screen to garner such cacophonous screeching from the audience? Sadly, I was about to find out.

Do you see the picture above? My dad and I settled into our seats mere seconds before this scene came on. I had no idea what "The Exorcist" was about, no concept of what was about to transpire in front of my eyes but I had seen it all already, hadn't I? Surely a little girl with a potty mouth couldn't be that scary...could she? Do you see the crucifix in her right hand? Do you remember what she did to herself with that same crucifix? I could not believe the shitstorm unfolding before my eyes as we had just sat down. This little girl was violating herself with that crucifix so hard that she bled all over the place, yet she was enjoying it. She was enjoying the act of violently fucking herself with that crucifix as she cursed like I had never heard a little girl curse before. And when her mother came into her room, facing her daughter's back...her daughter's head spun around to greet her as if it was on a turntable. Her face was horribly scarred and bleeding. Her crotch was soaked in blood. The audience laughed and screamed with fear & delight.

I began to lose my mind.

There was no way that what I saw happening on the screen in front of me was happening. There was a sense of sheer and utter terror that immediately took me over and refused to let me go. My mind just acquiesced to what my eyes were witnessing without a fight. There was no time to prepare myself for the onslaught unspooling itself before my eyes. This little girl was doing something unspeakable to herself and I had no idea why the audience was enjoying it so much. And it just got worse from there as she started manipulating her furniture across her room in an attempt to kill her mother. There was nothing enjoyable or entertaining happening in this theater as far as I was concerned. So as I actually felt my mind oozing out of my ears I did the one thing I knew I could do to shield my eyes from this new kind of cinematic terror...I put my hands up in front of them and prayed that it would be safe to open them up again in a few minutes. But my dad wasn't having any of this, he had just paid the princely sum of 5 dollars to get us in this theater and he was gonna make sure we got his money's worth. He pulled my hands down from off of my eyes and forced them open s he yelled at me to "Be a man!", "It's just a movie!", "Stop crying and watch!". That's right...I was crying uncontrollably after what felt like the most horrible three minutes of film that I'd ever had to sit through. And it had only just begun...

When it was all over and I begged to leave the theater my dad refused. After all we had missed the first 20-30 minutes or so...we had to see how it all began didn't we? Back then you could sit in a theater all day after paying for a ticket and watch movies all day/night long if you so desired. I was too weak from crying and praying for god to rescue me from the horror to fight him so I had to sit and watch along with him and hundreds of new viewers who screamed and laughed even louder than the ones who had gotten up and left me there to suffer alongside my father. And yeah, we sat through it again....

As we finally left the theater and headed home, my dad berated me for being so scared at what was just a "movie". Something that could never happen in real life. I was being "Silly" and "A little girl" for reacting the way I did and I "embarrassed" him. Maybe I did, maybe I didn't but I was too horrified to care. "The Exorcist" took a piece of me with it as the end credits rolled over Mike Oldman's "Tubular Bells", a theme that will never do any less than chill my blood whenever I hear it. I like to say it scarred my psyche. It made me feel helpless as I was forced to watch it. I felt doomed.

When we arrived home I immediately ran crying to my mother for support. She was suitably upset at what my father had forced me to sit through but he just shrugged his shoulders. "He'll get over it in a few hours" was his reply.

I didn't get over it.

For nearly 8 months afterwards I had trouble going to sleep. Every time I closed my eyes I saw her, the little possessed girl (Played by Linda Blair. The character's name was Ragan). And when I finally fell into what was a restless sleep her face was all I ever saw in my dreams. Her horribly scarred face, bleeding from multiple lacerations was always inches in front of mine while I slept. And she was talking to me, telling me that she hated me and wanted to kill me. She screamed and cursed at me and when I tried to run she would follow. When I woke up screaming at the top of my lungs in fright my mother would run into my room to soothe me back to sleep but I couldn't go back to sleep. Ragan was waiting for me in my dreams so I stayed awake. That's when my imagination started running wild...

I saw her head popping up at the foot of my bed nightly. It was glowing green and she was always laughing and promising to take good care of me when "My time came". What did that mean? Was I going to die? Was I going to Hell when I did? I would sweat buckets in the middle of February in NYC when the temps rarely got above 25 degrees. Using the bathroom in the middle of the night in the dark was an impossibility for me now. There was no way I was going to make the trek to the bathroom way over at the other end of the apartment ever again, Ragan was waiting for me under my bed and as soon as I set a foot down on my floor she would have me dead to rights and drag me back to hell with her. This wasn't gonna happen so I learned to hold my urine till sunrise when my dad got up to go to work and the sun was making it's debut. Some nights my bladder felt as if it was going to burst but it didn't matter, Ragan wasn't going to get me.

Directed by William Friedkin (The man in the picture above) from a book by William Peter Blatty, "The Exorcist" became a sensation shattering box office records around the world. This was wonderful news for Mr. Friedkin and company but lousy news for me because it meant i couldn't get away from the film no matter how hard I ran. It was all anyone ever spoke about. It was featured on magazine covers everywhere I looked. On television and on the radio were the relentless ad's that trumpeted what was being called the "Scariest movie ever". Linda Blair became a staple of all the talk shows and she seemed so nice, so innocent and wholesome..

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But I knew she wasn't. She was Satan's whore and this was all a plan to make all of us thralls to the big red guy with the pointed tail. I knew this. Why didn't anyone else? My nights were filled with dread as I knew she'd be waiting for me whenever I managed to fall asleep. And she was waiting for me when I'd wake up crying in the middle of the night. She wanted me to die and I daresay there were more than a few nights when I couldn't sleep at all and I too wanted nothing more than to die and hope that she wouldn't be waiting for me when I did. I was constantly tired as the days turned into weeks and the weeks turned into months and the months into years and the years...decades, yet the dreams still plagued me. Although they slowed down over the years they've never really left me alone. Ragan still appears at the foot of my bed a few times a year. She still pops into my dreams as well. She always looks the same, she never ages. And her message never gets any nicer either, she still wants me to join her. She has plans for me.

To this day I will not let this film into my home in any way, shape or form. I cringe at the sight of Blair in full makeup (It was really hard for me to pull pics for this rant). My daughters have seen the film at a friend's house and thought it was hilarious. They mock me over my fear of it, they call it "Irrational". They might be right but if I haven't gotten over it by now, nearly 40 years later? Then I never will.

I take my eleven year old son to the movies quite often. We laugh & cry & scream when we're supposed to at whatever film we're watching. I will never do to him what my dad did to me. I will never force him to watch something that might affect him the way "The Exorcist" affected me. I'd rather pluck my eyes out than see my son suffer as I have over the decades because of a film. I'd rather Ragan shuffled me off to whatever she has planned for me than do that to him.

A friend of mine (Who shall go by the initials JWA) knows of my severely debilitating fear of "The Exorcist". He suggested I scrawl these words down although I cannot fathom why. Maybe he thought by unburdening myself through this blog I might get over this fear I have. If so, his intentions were good ones and I thank him for even caring enough to try to help me. Everyone else just laughs at me when I tell them of this fear I have. I don't bother trying to find out what scares any of them though, I really don't care. All I know is that I'm just as scared now of "The Exorcist" as I've always been and it's gonna remain that way until my dying day. I'm not a particularly large or strong man but I'm not exactly a 98 pound weakling either. I can handle myself (& have) quite nicely but the thought of my having to live with this fear of a few goddamned reels of film for the rest of my life makes me feel like no more than a milquetoast.

And as long as I know Ragan is out there with her head spinning, vagina violating, curse spewing, vile ass waiting for me in my dreams....?

A milquetoast I shall remain.

Try to have a good night tonight. I know I won't.