WE CELEBR ATE WILLIAM FRIEDKIN AND WILLIAM PETER BLATTY’S CLASSIC TALE OF POSSESSION, WHICH MARKED ITS 50TH ANNIVERSARY ON 26 DECEMBER
B is for BAG MURDERS
Could the film feature a serial killer? Early on, Regan undergoes an angiography – a procedure for taking photos of the brain. Friedkin used a real NYU Medical Center radiologist for the scene, assisted by his technician, one Paul Bateson (pictured below on the right).
Four years later, Variety reporter Addison Verrill was found dead in his apartment. Bateson confessed to stabbing him after a sexual encounter, and was sentenced to 20 years. At the time, NYC police were investigating the “bag murders”: six gay men whose dismembered remains were dumped in the Hudson River inside garbage bags.
During a sentencing hearing, the prosecutor noted that Bateson had told a friend “killing is easy”, and talked about disposing of body parts in this fashion… Additional charges were never brought, though, due to lack of evidence.
C is for CURSE
The Exorcist acquired a reputation as “cursed”, due to calamities occurring on-set, or to loved ones of the cast. For example:
● The MacNeil house interior set was destroyed in a fire.
● Linda Blair’s grandfather died during production.
● So did Max von Sydow’s brother.
● Jack MacGowran (Regan’s first victim, Burke Dennings) died from flu shortly after finishing work on the film.
● Linda Blair suffered a spinal fracture when being thrashed about on Regan’s bed. Ellen Burstyn also injured her back, being jerked back on a wire.
But you could produce a similar list for many films. And they don’t tend to be drawn up if the movie is a romcom, only when fostering an aura of supernatural menace is good PR.
D is for DAFFY DUCK
The more you are spoofed, the more you’re part of the zeitgeist. In 1987 Looney Tunes short “The Duxorcist”, for example, Daffy visits a possessed lady duck who levitates and head-spins, eventually expelling spirits from her by cracking a series of corny gags.
For more specific parody, see the opening of Scary Movie 2 (2001), with James Woods as a
