Exorcist

Product Information

Are these issues worth boycotting this release over? For me, I’d say no – for nearly 90% of the run time, the picture quality is a significant improvement in every area over previous blu-ray editions. But for those of you who are particularly sensitive to image issues, this could very well prove to be a problematic release. It would be useful for WB to come out with a statement to once and for all state that the image issues are 100% director approved at least…but even if they did, we all know what happened with Friedkin’s previous film on blu, The French Connection… Burstyn recently won acclaim for her role in the grief drama Pieces of a Woman and will next be seen in the Showtime series The First Lady as Sara Delano Roosevelt alongside Viola Davis, Michelle Pfeiffer, Gillian Anderson and Kiefer Sutherland. Seemingly taken from a 4K restoration of the 35mm original camera negative, the image presented on this release has an awful lot to get into here. In terms of the basics, the two 100gb discs (one each for the Theatrical and Extended Directors Cut) deliver a native 3840 x 2160p resolution image in the original aspect ratios of 1.85:1. These are faithfully preserved using a 10-bit video depth, a WCG and HDR10 only colour pass for each (no Dolby Vision layer is included) and are encoded using the HEVC (H.265) codec. Warner Brothers' The Exorcist: Special Edition DVD is an excellent presentation of the film. It restores the color and dynamic feeling between brightly lit and ominously dark scenes in the film that had been lost in the old prints we've all seen on TV, cable, and VHS. I don't know how many times I've seen this movie, but this was the first time that it didn't look gray, washed out, or too dark.

Bonus Blu-Ray (included in the Ultimate Collector’s Edition - UCE - and Deluxe Edition - DE - releases ONLY): There’s nothing new on these discs at all that the previous 2011 UK/2013 US releases didn’t have…however whilst that is a touch disappointing, remember that this set has a fantastically solid set of extra features in its own right (especially the Mark Kermode documentary and the inclusion of the bonus blu which is new to the UK I believe)…and more importantly that our US cousins got nothing bar the commentaries and introduction.

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French (Canadian and European), German, Italian, Spanish (Castellano) Dolby Digital 5.1, Spanish (Latin) and Czech Dolby Digital 2.0 - Extended Directors Cut ONLY Subtitles include English, French, German, Italian, Spanish (Latin and Castellano), Dutch, Chinese and Japanese for the Theatrical Cut; Subs for the Extended Directors Cut are as above but also include Korean, Czech, Finnish, Swedish, Danish, and Norwegian. Note: the extras identified above on the Theatrical Cut and Extended Directors Cut are available on ALL UK releases, including the standard edition as far as I’m aware. The Exorcist tells the now-famous story of a girl's demonic possession, and a gripping fight between good and evil. Linda Blair, in a breakout role, plays Regan, a young girl who starts to exhibit strange, arcane behavior. Her mother (Burstyn) calls upon a priest, Father Karras (Miller), to investigate. But Karras, who has a spiritual crisis of his own, is suddenly confronted with the unimaginable evil of Regan's possession. Father Lankester Merrin (Von Sydow), an archeologist-priest, is called to help, and a horrific battle for her soul begins. This morning, Suntup Editions has announced a fine press limited edition of the 1971 novel Hell House by Richard Matheson, featuring new exclusive material including an introduction by R.C. Matheson, a foreword by Mike Flanagan and afterword by Nancy A. Collins.

Interviews with all of the principals are included, as are deleted scenes (including one with Regan walking upside-down on her hands down the steps), storyboards, and the film's original (and wisely cut) ending. One thing that's particularly amusing is the inclusion of several excepts from a joint interview with both Friedkin and Blatty, who to this day continue to disagree on the omission of certain scenes, and the ending of the film. Watching them argue over the film's message and how it should have been conveyed, while trying to be civil (it has been 25 years, after all) is pretty funny. The audio mix, in Dolby 5.1, is very good. This is a movie with a lot of quiet scenes and a lot of very loud ones, and the balance between the two is just right. There is a lot of ambient music and noise as well, and it's kept at just the right level. The scene where Father Karras listens to the many voices coming out of Regan on an audio tape sounds scarier than ever. But in the same year that a version of this story was attempted by a modern film maker in a much more modern world and single handedly failed to harness any of the depth, the craft or the power of this original, its testament to not just the richly deserved reputation but the quality of the film itself, its craft, its thematic depth and cultural relevance, that The Exorcist remains one of the very pinnacles of cinematic horror. I could go on…but I’ll spare you from covering over ground that many more learned than me have done before. Before William Friedkin’s The Exorcist there was William Peter Blatty’s The Exorcist, a novel published just two short years before Friedkin’s film adaptation terrified the world. In celebration of the legendary original horror novel’s 50th anniversary, Suntup Editions has announced a fine press limited edition of The Exorcist by William Peter Blatty. The Exorcist is released by Warner Bros. in the UK on 4K UHD standard, Ultimate Collectors and Deluxe Editions and are available now.

The Exorcist 4K Audio

To a lesser degree, similar issues had been seen earlier – notably the colour bloom was seen on an earlier visit to a subway station that saw florescent strip lights dazzle with very unnatural halos – but these final scenes are by far the biggest picture issue with this new release. With Matheson’s exploration of the darkest corners of the human psyche and his ability to evoke a sense of impending doom, Hell House is still standing tall as one of the most terrifying and influential horror classics of its kind. Note: the included 1080p blu-rays appear to be the same as the previous 2011 release – they do not appear to have the new 4K restoration included on them. The original ending of "The Exorcist" shows Regan and her mother leaving their house for the last time. "She doesn't remember any of it," her mother tells Father Dyer. Regan greets him politely, focuses on his Roman collar and suddenly hugs him. They get in the car, which begins to pull away, and then stops so that Chris can give the priest Father Merrin's medal, found in Regan's room. His hand closes over it. The car drives away. The priest looks down the fatal stairs below Regan's bedroom window. He turns away. Music and fadeout.

Documentaries: Raising Hell: Filming The Exorcist, The Exorcist Locations: Georgetown, Then and Now and Faces of Evil: The Different Versions of The Exorcist Widely regarded as a supernatural masterpiece, the film was nominated for 10 Academy Awards including Best Picture and Best Director as well as acting nominations for Burstyn, Miller and Blair. The film won two Academy Awards, including Best Adapted Screenplay for Blatty. In 2010, the United States Library of Congress selected the film for preservation in theNational Film Registry for being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant." Inspired by a 1949 article in The Washington Post in which a Catholic priest recounts his experience performing the ritual of exorcism on a young child, William Peter Blatty’s groundbreaking novel details the demonic possession of eleven-year-old Regan MacNeil. When neither medical professionals nor psychiatrists can come to Regan’s aid, her mother enlists the assistance of two priests. Overwhelmed but determined, they endeavor to rescue Regan from an unspeakable fate. To do so, they must face a series of terrifying moments that will test not only their strength, but the very core of their faith. Controversial, haunting and popular from the moment it opened, William Friedkin's masterpiece The Exorcist turns 50 years old, featuring stunning 4K UHD restorations of the original 1973 Theatrical Version and the 2000 Extended Director's Cut.

The Exorcist 4K Extras

The Exorcist Extended Director’s Cut Digital release contains the following previously released special features: One of horror cinemas true masterpieces, The Exorcist has lost none of its power after reaching its fiftieth year and it remains an iconic example of how truly sophisticated genre cinema can be in discussing so many key social and cultural themes whilst telling its own chilling and highly disturbing story. There’s just not enough superlatives… The Ultra HD Blu-ray Discs include both the 1973 theatrical version of the film and the 2000 Extended Director’s Cut of the film which features eleven additional minutes of footage not seen in theaters.

The edition is printed letterpress on Mohawk Via Vellum paper and is signed by R.C. Matheson, Mike Flanagan and Nancy A. Collins. Having seen the new version and reviewed my laser disc of the original version, I noticed four areas of difference between the 1973 and 2000 versions. One change is probably useful, the second neutral, the third pointless, the fourth catastrophic. There may be other changes I missed, including some flash-frames of satanic faces, but here's what standsout: 1. Early in the film, Regan, the possessed girl, is subjected to invasive testing and a spinal tap, with lots of queasy closeups of needles and fluids. This scene provides a preliminary medical explanation for Regan's behavior and sets up the later bedtime dialogue between mother and daughter about "what the doctor said"--dialogue that is unsupported in the 1973 version. It's useful. Best of all there's a 75-minute documentary, The Fear of God: The Making of the Exorcist that explains all aspects of the film's production, including how that little girl was able to spew pea soup 20 feet. (As it turns out, this movie was inspired by true events that occurred in 1949, in Silver Spring, Maryland.)

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The Exorcist Ultra HD Blu-ray disc (theatrical version) contains the following previously released special features: Released in 1973, The Exorcist is the story of a 12-year-old girl who is possessed by a demon, and the efforts of her mother, a psychiatrist/priest, and finally an "exorcist" to purge the demon from her body. It is such a startling, thought-provoking film, and subject to so many different interpretations, that it was a sensation when released and is even banned in the U.K. to this day. All of the performances are very good, but 12-year-old Linda Blair is amazing as Regan, the possessed child. Her facial contortions and body movements are so chillingly evil and beyond the concievable experience of any 12-year-old you really believe that she has become a puppet for another intelligence. The Exorcist" was and is a brilliant horror film, one with an archetypal ability to reach and disturb us. It will survive as long as people care about well-made movies. But now we are faced with this new version, some 12 minutes longer than the original. The restored material doesn't come as a surprise; some of it has been seen as outtakes on earlier video releases, and all of it has been much discussed by Friedkin and William Peter Blatty, the film's author and producer. Blatty has often said that Friedkin's original cut of about 140 minutes was "perfect." But the studio forced him to trim it to two hours. Friedkin defended the shorter version, saying his trims helped the pacing. This new version seems more like a "producer's cut" than a "director's cut." Although Friedkin endorses it, it reflects Blatty's long-standing preferences. In his foreword, Flanagan reveals that had there been a third season of his ‘Haunting’ series for Netflix, it would have been an adaptation of Hell House! In the early 1990s I joined Owen Roizman, the film's cinematographer, in a shot-by-shot analysis of the film over four days at the Hawaii Film Festival. As we dissected it, I gained an appreciation of the craft of the film--how it embeds the sensational material in an everyday world of misty nights, boozy parties and housekeeping details, chats in a laundry room and the personal lives of the priests. The movie is more horrifying because it does not seem to want to be. The horror creeps into the lives of characters preoccupied with their lives: Father Karras with his mother and his faith, Father Merrin with his work and health, Chris MacNeil with her career and marriage.