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At Last! The Theory Revealed!
posted Friday, 31 August 2007
After a dozen attempts to unsuccessfully get to the point that I want to make in this paragraph using the kind of florid, self-indulgent prose I hope to someday be famous for, I shall instead just come out and say it:
The Exorcist sucks.
Big time.
It is by far the most overrated and over-praised genre work in the history of cinema. The clearest example I can think of a film whose status has far more to do with nostalgic memories of its first impact on the collective zeitgeist than its actual qualities as a work of motion picture entertainment.
I really don’t like it.
Why?
I suppose I could come up with some long, insightful justification for my antipathy for William Friedkin’s film, but simply stating the truth will save me ever so much time.
It’s fucking boring.
At this point I have to admit that from a pretty young age I made the decision that I was not a believer in Christian theology, so I’ve always been completely immune to the spiritual terror that I suspect was the major reason for the film’s unusual success in 1973. Like The Passion of the Christ, it was the rare gross-out film that could be enjoyed by people of faith, who came to wallow in its religiously-minded viscera by the droves. And, in many cases, this was their first exposure to this form of gory cinematic spectacle and they interpreted their enjoyment of it as a reflection of the film, rather than the long-awaited fulfillment of their own nascent bloodlust.
Having already been exposed to these kinds of disturbing visual effects and possessed with an agnostic’s Teflon soul, I’ve always been able to see the film for what it really is—a dreary, pretentious exercise in typical 1970s self-importance. Now, that alone isn’t enough to make me condemn the film, since I love Taxi Driver, which stands as the ne plus ultra of dreary, pretentious exercises in typical 1970s self-importance, but the clear difference between the two films is that Scorsese’s work fascinates while Friedkin’s is tedious to the point of absurdity (and don’t get me started on the even longer director’s cut!).
Again, I really don’t like it.
Thus the film has always stood at the center of an irony I hadn’t given much thought to until this week, when I allowed myself the pleasure of a mini-marathon look at the work of The Exorcist’s young discovery, the unusually adorable Linda Blair. The irony is this: No matter how otherwise imperfect a film is, I am able to enjoy it if it features Blair as a significant member of its cast, with the sole exception of the one film she remains most famous for and whose reputation haunts her career to this very day, 34 years later.
At first this simply seemed like an odd little quirk of my own personal preference, but the more I thought about it, the more I was overcome by the nagging sensation that I was onto something much larger—something much more significant.
Something—dare I say—cosmic.
It became immediately apparent that the only way for me to properly confirm this feeling was to do something I had been avoiding for some time. On a whim I had picked up a copy of the much-maligned 1977 sequel to The Exorcist, mostly out of a twisted curiosity to see why it had received such a hostile reaction when it was first released. I remember reading a couple of books from that period when I was a kid that featured polls asking people to name the worst films of all time and inevitably Exorcist II: The Heretic was listed near (or at) the top of these lists. Considering how much my opinion differed from the majority on the subject of the first film, it only made sense that I would similarly disagree on the second. But, because of its connection to a film I really, truly and sincerely hated, I couldn’t bring myself to actually throw it into my player and watch it.
That is, until science told me I had to.
In his book Red Lobster, White Trash and the Blue Lagoon author Joe Queenan first introduced me to the concept of scheissenbedauern, a (typically) German term that refers to the strange feeling of disappointment that overcomes you when something you had hoped would be transcendently awful is, instead, merely bad or even simply mediocre. It’s a feeling I’ve come to know quite well as I’ve spent more and more time exploring the world of lamentable cinema, but there’s another sensation I’ve become quite familiar with that—as far as I know—the German’s have yet to categorize. This is the feeling of confusion that overtakes you as you watch a movie that is universally reviled, such as The Heretic, and find yourself completely unable to understand why it has earned so much scorn and derision.
For years now the film’s relatively few defenders have labeled it as being one those movies that is “So Bad It’s Good,” but as someone who loves those very kind of films more than most, I cannot concur with this judgment. While not a perfect film, there is absolutely nothing about it to justify its reputation as a work of accidental camp. It features not a single hilariously bad performance (which, considering it stars Richard Burton—who gave dozens of them—is somewhat amazing) or any ineptly made directorial choices, both of which are de rigueur in the creation of a “So Bad It’s Good” classic.
The only possible reason I can think of to account for the unjustifiably hostile reaction the film was met with and which taints its reputation to this day is that it highlights rather than disguises the absurdities of the original. In the same way fans of the original Star Wars trilogy detest the later prequels for the innate childishness that made them fans of the series in the first place, the one crime The Heretic commits is that it makes anyone who took the first film seriously feel like a jackass and rather than blame themselves for their own credulity they instead choose to reserve all of their hatred for the vehicle responsible for exposing their foolishness.
But having always considered the first film to be a badly told joke, I found myself able to appreciate The Heretic for exactly what it was and—as a result—thoroughly enjoyed it. And one of the major reasons I enjoyed it came from the fact that, unlike the first film where she was treated as little more than a prop, here Linda Blair was elevated to a leading role, which was the key to proving my hypothesis.
So, after so much build up, it is time for me to actually discuss the theory I have chosen to name the Linda Blair Anomaly.
It works like this:
Since there is no way to satisfactorily explain why Linda Blair remains best know for her worst film, when there are so many awesome films for which she deserves to be revered, the only conclusion one can come to (a la Occam’s Razor) is that she is the sole known gateway to a mirror dimension whose reality is inverse to our own. In that universe, The Exorcist is considered one of the worst films of all time (except by maybe a lone blogger writing on his website, The House of Grim), and the lovely genre actress who serves as the gateway to our dimension has been catapulted to deserved superstardom thanks to her roles in such beloved classics as Roller Boogie, Hell Night, Chained Heat, Savage Streets and, of course, Exorcist II: The Heretic.
So, you see, Linda Blair is the key to our someday breaking the bonds of our everyday reality. It isn’t crazy to imagine that she serves the same role in dozens, if not thousands or even millions, of alternative dimensions and it is for that reason that not only does Linda Blair matter, but she might just be the most important person who ever lived.
Now you know.
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