Get "Possessed" by Movies

If you keep meaning to join in on the Hit Me With Your Best Shot fun, but haven't yet made the plunge do it with the last episode of the first half of season 3 (we'll take a few weeks off and start again before wrapping season 3). We'll be discussing Possessed (1947) with Joan Crawford. She made another film by the same name in the 30s so extra credit points if you wanna do both (otherwise unrelated) films.

If looks could kill many of Joan Crawford's co-stars would have died of unnatural causes. But just in case she also carries a gun.

P.S. Since I'm late with Edward Scissorhands, I'll still accept submissions so join in the fun! I'll wrap Edward on Monday and Joan on Wednesday and then we'll break until late June.

P.P.S. Any suggestions for the series are welcome. I do read them all and try to cover films from multiple genres and decades.

Hit Me With Your Best Shot: "The Exorcist"

The Hit Me With Your Best Shot series is deceptively simple. Choose a single shot from a pre-selected movie that you think is best, best being in the eye of the beholder. Tonight we're looking at The Exorcist (1973). And for me at least, it's the first time I've looked at it. That's not quite as shocking as your 12 year old daughter's head spinning 'round 180º, but maybe it's close.

Nearly every horror classic I've seen I've resisted in some ridiculous way: I saw Halloween at a sleepover movie marathon but it took my horror-loving friend five holidays to convince me; I first saw Silence of the Lambs because I had five nightmares about it beforehand and wanted them to end; I can't remember what prompted Rosemary's Baby but I'm willing to bet that I rented the video five times before actually watching it. And so on. 

If I was ever going to watch The Exorcist, the power of blogging would have to compel me. And so it did.

And here we are in the haunted upstairs bedrooms of actress Chris MacNeil (Ellen Burstyn) and her daughter Regan (Linda Blair). The first thing that impressed me about the  movie was how rooted in character it was. Director William Friedkin and the novelist screenwriter William Peter Blatty spend more than half hour with the four main characters before the devil (The Devil?) crashes the party. The first shot that I truly loved foreshadowed the horrors to come in a wonderfully lived-in nonchalant way. After Chris MacNeil unleashes a stream of profanity on an angry phone call (including, pointedly, several "Jesus Christ!"s) we cut to the middle of the night when she's woken by a phone call. I love that the shot starts in the dark and when Chris flips on the light the only face that's really illuminated, given her bleary banged face, is Regan's in a photo on the bedstand; the young girl looks actively worried for her mother which is a brilliant set decoration move. Chris hangs up the phone and the camera tracks her movements to the right until we and she realize that her daughter has crawled into bed with her. It's the first time Regan is essentially split in the film, surrounding her anxious still oblivious mother.

Chris: What are you doing here?
Regan: My bed was shaking. I can't get to sleep.

Here in a sweet mother/daughter moment, Regan's telling us where all the horror will be found. The next voice we here, overlap edited over the end of this shot but just barely is the devil's if you want to get metaphoric about it is Captain Howdy's (The Devil's) who is banging about in the attic. Oh Chris, soon to be overwhelmed Chris, it's not rats. 

The Exorcist builds beautifully towards its truly grotesque last act but at least half of the reason it's so effective is that it never forgets who is terrified while it's terrifying us. My second favorite shot in the film is a beautifully quiet character beat for the title character(s) in the "intermission" of the exorcism. 

The Exorcist(s): Father Karras and Father Merrin

One of the movie's most disturbing famous images is "Help me" scrawled on Regan's stomach from the inside.  If Father Damien Karras (Jason Miller) were to remove his clothing, wouldn't we see a similar cry for help from his private hell?

It's these quiet glimpses of internal terror that really sell the movie for me, whether it's Ellen Burstyn's increasing impotent understanding (when no one else has accepted it -- not even the priests) or Father Karras's personal doubts. This silence, this vacuum, lets the terror flood in, often courtesy of the Oscar winning sound work. In the shot above we still hear Regan's possessed wheezing from inside the bedroom, less shocking but even more unsettling than her loud profane outbursts.

This push and pull between external and internal terror, room-shaking chaos and sudden absences of sound but for Exorcist chanting to fill the void powers, for me, the most hypnotic shot in the film. The room suddenly goes quiet and we see Regan lift off the bed in crucifix pose until she's nearly touching the ceiling. A simple familiar image, yes, like you'd see in a magic show. But somehow alien and unnatural, too. Only the exorcists can break this unholy spell.

The Power of Blog Compels Them
Movies Kick Ass is Hollywood the devil?
The Tomas Experience "as sure as the sun rises, you can find evil anywhere"
Film Actually the mysteries of faith and science
The Sketchy Details Regan split in two
Antagony & Ecstasy a single mother's personal hell
Cheerful Cynicism the slow burn is the best part 
Cinesnatch has mixed feelings about the movie 
Okinawa Assault colours and threats 
Encore's World is moved by the mother/daughter bond 
Beau McCoy "The Exorcist and Nothingness" 
Stranger than Most find horror in the hospital
Pussy Goes Grrr "body and soul" and Linda Blair's eyes

Next Wednesday: Edward Scissorhands (1990)... will we catch you dancing in it?
Previously: Pariah (2011), Raise the Red Lantern (1991),  Serenity (2005)

"The Exorcist" and Nothingness

[Editor's Note: Beau McCoy is a longtime reader who I met recently. I quite like his writing and have asked him to contribute to the site. I hope you'll encourage him in the comments to return again. He doesn't have a blog so I'm featuring his "Hit Me With Your Best Shot" entry here as a kind of sneak peak to Wednesday night's group activity looking at "The Exorcist". I'm already terrified to follow this entry up. It's quite an opening scene. Are you joining us on Wednesday? -Nathaniel]

by Beau McCoy
There are few horror films whose reputation precedes them quite like The Exorcist (1973). Even if you never see the film, you know it. You know what it's about. You know specific scenes and you know certain images, even if you can't quite remember how you came across them. In much the same way Friedkin intended for certain subliminal imagery to make its way into the film, (using failed makeup tests with a model), the film inserts itself, impermissibly, into the subconscious of those who experience it in one way or another.

When you hear about films, if you're anything like me, there's something that hits you that I've called 'The Wave'. A tsunami of emotion, memory, nostalgia, fear, and regret that gives you opportunity to view yourself viewing that film in a different time. I can't remember much from the early part of my life. There are people who I see after years and I can't recall exactly how it was I knew or met them in the first place. But with a film, it's as though it made its way into me, burrowing itself into my subconscious, or heart, dick, what have you, and when it's called upon, it pops up cheerfully like an old friend to say 'Hey! What have you been up to?' 

The Exorcist, appropriately enough, is not so cheerful. It looms. [Beau's best shot after the jump]

Click to read more ...

The Power of Blog Compels You

Remember to join us for The Exorcist discussion next Wednesday night.

If you've never participated in the Hit Me With Your Best Shot series, it's a good time to start. Just post your favorite single shot from the pre-selected movie to your web home wherever that me and tell us why you chose it. We'll link up.

Wed 05/09 THE EXORCIST (1973) ~currently available on Netflix Instant Watch
Wed 05/16 EDWARD SCISSORHANDS (1990) ~currently available on Netflix Instant Watch
Wed 05/23 POSSESSED (1948)

"Hit Me" could use some fresh blood so tell your movie-loving friends to join in, too. Doesn't everybody love The Exorcist? (Well except for me since I've never seen it. gulp)

Best Shot: "Pariah"

On this season of Hit Me With Your Best Shot we've looked at 80s fantasy (Ladyhawke), 60s zeitgeist drama (Bonnie & Clyde), 40s musical (Easter Parade), 30s gamechanger (Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs), 00s science fiction western (Serenity), and a 90s Asian masterpiece (Raise the Red Lantern). For this week's film, I chose something up to the minute, Dee Rees' Pariah (2011) just out on DVD. 

I found this film so moving late last year that I cursed Focus Features for letting it be crushed in the December glut where it had no business being in the first place. The coming out story of a shy Brooklyn lesbian was far too small and ethnic and gay and feminine an indie to hook Oscar voters so why make it compete for that attention? This selection was my excuse to promote the film as it enters its second and hopefully warmly embraced life for home viewing; it gets better!

I say that with a wink but without a trace of sarcasm. You see though I didn't have time to rewatch -- I've been struggling lately offblog. Apologies -- my most vivid memory of the film visually, and what I thought I might choose, is either of the bookending shots on the bus. I still remember the curiousity and sympathy I felt near the beginning when watching "Lee" travel home on the bus late at night after visiting a gay bar and the cathartic mix of peace and tears I experienced at the finale when light floods on to our humble heroine. The two shots are like beautifully symmetrical start and end points on her gorgeously executed character arc, a curved frame if you will for Adepero Oduye's breakout performance. Not that this character arc is ending. Lee's journey has only just begun.

I'm thrilled to discover that both of these shots were chosen by one of our 'Hit Me' participants. Since Pariah is as much about Alike trying to find her community as it is about her self-discovery, I think this is an ideal opportunity to say a genuine and loud THANK YOU to the participating blogs that make "Hit Me" such a rewarding communal series I hope you're always clicking and reading them for multiple views on all these fine films! 

• FILM ACTUALLY looks at clothing as a public declaration of sexuality
• ENCORE'S WORLD finds light from within
• AWWW, THE MOVIES cocoons you in the moving poetry
• SKETCHY DETAILS finds Rees use of color masterful and compares it to the work of Dario Argento (!)
• CINESNATCH loves the performances but can't quite connect with the film
• THE FILM'S THE THING is disappointed in the acclaimed indie but found Alike's double life reflections interesting. 
• ANTAGONY & ECSTASY discusses the promise of Dee Rees and the bold recurring choices of artificial and "real" light...

...if all indie filmmakers thought about how to communicate visually as much as Rees has, American cinema would be in far better shape."

Next Wednesday on "Hit Me": The Exorcist (1973). Why don't you join in? I'll start early this week and make sure it happens. Nobody can ever believe that I've never seen it!