MY MORTAL SOUL!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Guess it wasn't worth much since he gave it back. Didn't even take it out of the box. Rude.
Here's my recounting of a trip to legendary San Francisco to watch THE EXORCIST, a movie so scary, it'll make your head spin, an excerpt from my book, IN THE DARK: A LIFE AND TIMES IN A MOVIE THEATER.
The horror film heavyweight champion of the world known as THE EXORCIST had opened in San Francisco long before it hit my hometown of Stockton, California. (That’s how movies opened back then, major cities first, then the rest of the country. The practice of nationwide releases didn’t occur until a few years later.) It was imperative that I be the first person on my block to witness THE event of the year. How could I not? Audience members across the country were fainting…barfing…running out into the streets and crying out to the heavens to save their mortal souls. Who wouldn’t want to see that? So, as I had done so often, I took a solo trip to the City by the Bay.
That fateful day in the middle of January of 1974, The City was cold and wet from a storm that blew through the night before. I was already feeling a little punky, which I had attributed to a lack of sleep in anticipation of being a part of an actual cultural phenomenon. Catching a nap on the Greyhound bus ride to SF (no car, don’t ya know) didn’t help, but I figured maybe a brisk walk through town might shake off whatever I was going though so that I could enjoy my date with the Devil. I set off on the same path I took for almost every trip to The City, a marathon jaunt that took me from Market Street, through downtown, Chinatown, North Beach (Howdy, Carol and your two Dodas!) to my final destination, Fisherman’s Wharf. My goal was to catch the first matinee at the Northpoint where THE EXORCIST had its first San Francisco run. My timing was impeccable and I plunked down into a theater seat minutes before show time. That jaunt through town, normally invigorating, seemed to have taken a lot out of me. My head started to spin; a forbearer of things to come.
William Friedkin and William Peter Blatty shook me senseless for the next two hours with their spook shows of all spook shows. I am not a religious person nor have I ever been. for I wasn’t raised in any particular denomination. The church my family attended-for a short period of time, mind you-was generic at best. Never has either the fear of God or Satan been drilled into me. However, I bought THE EXORCIST-hook, line and sinker. If it rattled me, of all people, it wasn’t difficult to imagine how it would affect anyone with stronger beliefs than myself. No wonder people were freaking out.
The best horror films continue to scare you long after you view them. They get under your skin because they’ve tapped into an inherent fear; maybe even one you never knew you had. The mere thought of it can jolt you, sometimes causing you to relive the experience. Maybe it’s just an image. Maybe it’s just a moment. Or maybe, from start to finish, you are tied up in a knot with a sense of foreboding. Something awful is going to happen. When it finally occurs, there certainly is no relief because you know it’s going to happen again and over and over again, each time worse than before, relentlessly until you are a useless rag by the final credits. Something inside of you wonders if it really has come to an end. It is that doubt that will eat at you. When it doesn’t, it’ll lie dormant and, just when you think it’s gone for good, it’ll reawaken and with it, your fear. Such is THE EXORCIST. Now that’s a good movie.
For all intents and purposes, I was dead to the world. My head was swirling with visions of THE EXORCIST. I was propelled into the surrealistic world of the fever dream. One scene from the movie in particular begins to play over and over on a seemingly endless loop.
The Crucifix Scene.
Out of everything in the movie, this perhaps disturbed me the most. It’s not because of the sacrilegious nature of the scene because that meant nada to me. In Blatty’s book, it is clearly defined that Regan is demonically masturbating with the cross. Due to the fact that this was the early seventies after all and this was an underage girl we are talking about here, the way Friedkin staged this act and possibly got away with it at all was to have Regan stab herself in the crotch instead. (It’s the old Sex vs. Violence argument) Sure, she’s chanting, “Let Jesus fuck you!” as she thrusts the crucifix into her nether region. But I know what masturbation is supposed to be and that ain’t it. That is stabbing-plain and simple.
In my feverish state, this is all I am seeing. Regan just keeps plunging that metal crucifix into her body repeatedly. She’s flinging the blood everywhere. Her mother is screaming in the background non-stop. The Devil’s voice is alternately howling and growling and laughing and crying and it all gets louder and the stabbing gets faster and faster and the blood is flying everywhere. It’s on me! It’s all over me! I cried out…
“STOP!!!!!!!!!!!”
I was drenched in my own sweat when I escaped that nightmare. Did I really cry out? No one in the bus seemed to acknowledge it, so maybe I dreamed that too. I was only aware of one thing: I got frightened out of my ever-loving mind. In my addled state of semi-consciousness, I feared for my very existence. Was my soul truly my own? Or did the spawn of Satan now own and operate an all night deli in its place, complete with an all-you-can-eat slime buffet?
Nah. It was just a combination of the flu and a very powerful piece of cinema mixed together in the already addled mind of an honest to goodness head case, that little
old weirdo, ME.
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