The scratching and rapping sounds.
When Regan is lying in bed and suddenly opens her eyes.
In the novel, Regan complained of a burning smell.
The shadowy figure moving in Regan's bedroom.
Many others.
I find those build-up instances to be more scary than the actual full-blown shock scenes.
Agreed! Those small creepy jolts and touches make this an extraordinary film...
sharerapping sounds.
I agree. I love this film but my brother detests it. We both agree on the creepiest scene and it is subtle AF! Father Karras looks up to Regan's room when she is supposedly alone and a shadow crosses her window. Love it
shareIt's Kinderman, not Karras, who sees the shadow while watching the house from his car.
:)
One thing I am curious of, did the demon know that Kinderman was watching in his car and was walking about the room for him to see? And what conclusions did the Demon want him to come to?
shareMy guess is that the demon felt curious ... Karras has just left the house and Kinderman is watching him from the car. Maybe the demon felt that something was going on, got loose from the straps and peeked out the window, where the demon could see both Kinderman and Karras. Also, because it seems that the demon was aware of Kinderman's earlier detailing of Dennings' death to Chris and knew of Kinderman's interest in the case, maybe, just maybe, the demon wanted to confuse Kinderman. The window silhouette obviously puzzled Kinderman. It looks odd - the way it sort of glides by the window. Because it's "Regan", Kinderman probably wonders what a very sick little girl is doing out of bed. That's all I can come up with...
:)
I do believe that the demon knows Kinderman is watching at just the right moment, and times it just perfectly to walk across the room where he can see. And I believe it is done to confuse and make Kinderman suspicious.
Unfortunately, one thing that is missing from the film, is the urgency of curing Regan as Kinderman's investigation closes in around her. It wasn't until I read the book years later that I realized how vital this was to the climax of the plot. In the book, Kinderman's investigation (not without reluctance) leads him to Regan, even against his preferred judgement, since this child being the murderer makes little sense. As an audience we fear for Regan on a spiritual, physical, as well as a legal level. That doesn't come across in the movie. Although, the interesting thing is, I can tell Friedkin did whatever he could to squeeze as much of it as possible in there. But I just never get the feeling while watching the film that Regan's implication in the murder could be a major issue. The film has no way of communicating to us that Kinderman's investigation is honing in on her the way it is done in the book. The most we get is a horrifying revelation by Chris that her daughter is in fact the murderer (which is dramatic enough for us viewers and therefore effective).
Even in that final scene, when Kinderman comes to the house during the exorcism, it just doesn't register. In the book, towards the end, we know that he's at the house to finally express in some way or another that Regan is the culprit of the murder. This creates an urgency and a race against the clock to successfully "heal" the girl that is never felt in the film. Of course, the exorcism lasting days in the book as opposed to one night in the film plays a factor here as well. It's almost like a subplot that doesn't make it into the film, despite the fact that the film does what it can to depict for us all it can of Kinderman's investigation. The same urgency just is not there. After reading the book, however, it all makes even more sense.
Is the mother lying about her daughter being so sick that the girl is bedridden? She seemed totally against the idea of Kinderman seeing Regan. How is she able to walk across the room?
The scene with Regan's silhouette passing by the window therefore has more layers when knowing these plot portions of the narrative that don't exactly make it out of the book. We don't exactly know what Kinderman is doing there. We think his investigation has moved on at that point. We have no idea Regan is potentially in trouble. But the book makes this clear. Funny how this scene (to me the creepiest one in the film) is one that is not in the book (at least I don't recall it if it is), while the plot elements behind its importance conversely do not make it into the film. LOL, ironic..
I'm not a control freak, I just like things my way
Yup. I was thinking about father karras. It was kinderman.
Do the *beep* snow angel, Dude!, Do the *beep* snow angel!
Thanks for the clarification.
:)
Just thought of another creepy, subtle one...the hypnosis scene that features Regan's head and shoulders framed against a chair and her nightie and face seem as if they, and the chair's fabric, are of similar material, as if she has grown out of the chair...
I always felt that way as well. This film does have a lot of those qualities in it………..I always liked when Chris hears noises in the attic, one scene just shows Regan staring into the frame. Another scene is when they show Regan's behavior at the clinic, one scene just shows her lying down staring at the camera what appears to be mumbling………creepy.
shareone scene just shows Regan staring into the frame.
I find those build-up instances to be more scary than the actual full-blown shock scenes
Drawer slides open...
"Did you do that?"
"Ahhhhhh"
Pushes drawer closed
"Do it again"
"In time."
"No....now."
"In time."
The way she said "in time" the second time was very creepy, and presaged events to come.
Of course Regan's silhouette at the window showed she could get out of her restraints whenever she wanted.
shareshe could get out of her restraints whenever she wanted.
Which raises the question, "So why didn't she?" Karl's first words to Karras and Chris post-crucifix rape scene: "It wants no straps". And one of the first things the demon says to Karras is, "You might loosen these straps, then". It appears that the straps are an issue for the demon.
Of course, the demon loves trickery, so it could be pretending that the straps are an impediment, when in reality they are no such thing. But if they are not an impediment and the demon can get in and out of them at whim, then why get out of them for an insignificant peek out the window at Karras and Kinderman? Why not repeated strap-loosening in actions that really count? We talk about "the demon's fury", but if the fury is real, why does it tolerate straps at all? Why doesn't it break or dissolve them and continue to physically attack people, like it did when the doctors first come to the house, like it did with the hypnotist, like it did in the crucifix scene, like it did when it is actually seen breaking the straps when it clobbers Karras on the back of the head?
If the demon can banish the straps at will, one must critically examine the question of why - as far as we know - it only did this just once, to glide past the window for a second or two, but not on other occasions when doing so would permit the demon to do some real destruction and to perform "meaningful" action.
Me, I think it's because the straps suited its purposes just fine. The goal was to lure Merrin into a showdown and mentally destroy Chris and Father Karras. And part of its way of achieving that goal is by creating the doubt/confusion of whether it was mental illness or the supernatural. As well as just being something that Chris had to live with in her own house.
If all it wanted to do was go on a Friday the 13th - style rampage, we wouldn't have had much of a movie.
Also: the possibility of Regan being in trouble with the authorities, maybe, was some additional despair and torture the demon could bring to Chris? Maybe it wanted Kinderman to keep the investigation going and question Regan's involvement?
Also: the possibility of Regan being in trouble with the authorities, maybe, was some additional despair and torture the demon could bring to Chris? Maybe it wanted Kinderman to keep the investigation going and question Regan's involvement?
I think that's part of it - why else would Kinderman come back to the MacNeil house at night (just before Karras' heroic act)? He must have thought he had narrowed the suspects down to this one "very sick little girl". So he probably went there with the express purpose of seeing and talking (if possible) to Regan and putting an end to the case, whether to arrest her or to have her put away for her own good. Of course, Karras' sacrifice has returned Regan to herself just moments before Kinderman arrives in her room. He may not know it yet (if he ever does), but what has just transpired in that icy little room was nothing less than the rescue of a child, the "demonicide" of an evil spirit, and the redemption of a doubting priest. The demon lost in three ways - as you say, it was thwarted in its purpose to torment Chris with the legalities of her daughter's illness. Plus, it was thwarted because Merrin died before it could kill Regan, and because Karras proved a much more lethal opponent than it ever expected.
Which does beg the question of what Kinderman did after witnessing two more deaths in Regan's room. Did he investigate Merrin & Karras's deaths? Did he somehow become convinced of the reality of possession, and didn't seek to prosecute Regan? Did Father Dyer have to convince him?
shareNot trying to dodge your good questions, but I think that Blatty wants us to turn these issues around in our mind without necessarily coming to a black and white conclusion: gray areas abound, and maybe that's how Blatty wanted it.
But, to take a guess at your questions:
I don't think that Dyer ever mentioned the possession, Merrin, Karras, the exorcism to Kinderman beyond what Kinderman would have by necessity found out about the case from Chris, Regan (on the theory that she may have remembered only the very early stages of the possession), Sharon, Karl, Willie, the doctors, the Barringer Clinic records, and the bishop's office's recording of Karras' request that an exorcism be performed. However, within those constraints, I can see Kinderman asking Dyer pertinent and genuinely spiritually-curious questions about Damien and about possession. Not that Dyer was close to the case, but he was close to Damien and of course was familiar with the convolutions of Catholic theology. So Kinderman probably did expand his spiritual perspective by cultivating his new friendship with Dyer, but we just need to guess by how much.
Yes, I do believe that upon reflection, Kinderman became convinced that a demonic possession had occurred;
that he took Karras off the suspect-hook as a "priest with a spite against the Church" who might have been desecrating the church; that he removed Karras as a suspect in Dennings' murder, even though Karras was probably athletic enough to have done it (he couldn't place Karras at the house when Dennings was murdered anyway);
in the novel, Kinderman cannot really prove that Regan/a demon killed Dennings - he can link Regan to the desecrations because he matched paint from her sculptures to the paint used in the desecrations - but he can't prove that this "very sick little girl" actually killed Dennings, except, as shown in the film, by a process of elimination inherently grotesque in its conclusions;
of course, in the film we all see that the cat was out of the bag when Kinderman witnesses the dead priests and immediately finds out that there had been an exorcism, so now he knew that this supernatural element linked directly to Dennings' "witchcraft-type" murder and the desecrations; iirc, in the novel, the police report indicates that Karras committed suicide over faith-and-guilt issues, and of course, there was nothing to investigate re: Merrin's obvious death by heart attack;
but Blatty leaves Kinderman with a lingering doubt about Karras committing suicide, and fleshes out this doubt in a conversation between Chris and Dyer when Dyer tells Chris that Karras was having faith problems, and Chris replies, "I've never seen such faith in my life". Kinderman, far from being left with a grim memory of a suicided, despairing Jesuit, is left with a mystery that begins to lead him into supernatural questions, with the police report kind of "hanging out there in space", as a merely pragmatically legal, external lock on the case. But Kinderman - this example of a "kinder man" - continues to really wonder...people just have to read it to see just how much he wonders!
That makes the gap between The Exorcist and Legion all the more interesting. I'm thinking it took Chris McNeil to convince Kinderman that a) there was a possession and b) to please not pursue charges against Regan, as that would negate Damien's sacrifice.
Unless Chris was able to hustle him and keep him convinced that it was just a heart attack and a crazy despairing priest committing suicide!
It WAS just a heart attack, not a crime. Merrin's death was not mysterious at all, and Kinderman had no reason to question it.
And as I wrote above, Chris didn't need to convince Kinderman that there was a possession - he knew that because of the dead priests and their ritual accoutrements.
And again as I wrote, Kinderman can't nail Regan - possessed or not - as the culprit in Dennings' death - he can only link her crafts paint to the desecration paint. He has no fingerprints on Dennings' body to match to Regan; he only has an extremely implausible suspicion that the film director had been killed by a very strong man, but there was only a very sick little girl in the house at the time.
Chris would never ask Kinderman not to pursue charges against Regan because that in itself would be telling Kinderman that Chris knew that "Regan" killed Dennings - a secret that she only revealed to no human soul except Karras, who is now dead. To indicate to Kinderman that "Regan" was the real killer would be an act of insanity on Chris's part. Kinderman never met the possessed Regan - he only sees the real Regan, returned to herself after Karras' sacrificial death. He cannot prosecute a perfectly sane and healthy Regan. His hands are empty; the culprit has escaped (literally, because Karras expelled the real culprit). Thus, for Chris and Regan, the ending is happy in the sense that Kinderman can't prosecute Regan, and the real murderer, the demon, has been banished.
All valid points for speculation. Going strictly on the film, not novel - Kinderman could have examined the "crime" scene and easily deduced that an exorcism was taking place.
Still, given how persistent he was, I would think he would have pressed the investigation further, going on the assumption that he wouldn't believe in literal, supernatural possession at this point in the story.
At the very least, he may have thought to pursue why this exorcism, which proved deadly, and which to an outsider would seem dangerous and contrary to accepted 'common sense', was taking place in lieu of medical attention for Regan.
And because he was such a dogged investigator, I have to think that Chris, Carl and Sharon must have had some sort of conversation with him that led him to let sleeping dogs lie. Whether that involved convincing him of a literal possession or not, we'll never know, i guess
Did the novel give an indication of Kinderman's follow-up?
Well, at least he knew of Regan's extensive tests, which he could easily look up, as he could also look up the records of her local doctors, so I don't think he would have found home care - which was agreed to by the doctors - to have been suspicious.
In the novel Kinderman doesn't do any follow-up except for some reading on possession and "off-screen" interviews with the witnesses. He accepts that Regan had been mentally ill and that the disease had gone beyond medical explanation, so that Chris was driven to Karras to seek an exorcism. Kinderman's conclusion was that Karras' mind had simply snapped with the long stressful hours of exorcism, the mother-guilt, the fear of Regan's imminent death, and the shock of Merrin's death. The novel only devotes a paragraph to Kinderman's conclusion. The next paragraph explains why Dyer doesn't believe the police investigation's conclusion.
Totally agree OP. It's the small occurrences that creeped me out or disturbed me. Definitely the sounds in the attic including the odd scurrying sound. I agree with all the others too, especially the shadow gliding passed Regan's bedroom window.
Speaking of Regan's bedroom, the scene where Chris goes into the bedroom in the dark on the night of Dennings' death and the window is open and you get the shot of Regan lying face down uncovered on the bed. To me, that is very creepy. You don't know if she is awake or not because her face is hidden. I was waiting for her to suddenly do something when Chris approaches the bed.
I would also say the quick flashes of the white demon face and the priest finding the desecrated statue in the church also unsettle and disturb me.
yep me too. At least in part 'cause it's phenomena we see ourselves in our own houses. I bet the audience freaked out from noises, smells, and cool drafts after getting home from the movies. A friend in the 70s told me when one's light flickered the devil had entered the room. Last year an owl I assume came to my window and made weird noises. I even heard breathing coming from my bath mirror and then beside my bed. I don't believe in spirits I know there's a scientific explanation. I just don't have it yet.
shareI agree OP.
Less is more.
I always found the shot of Chris outside and noticing Karras and that other man talking to be very unnerving, and not just because of the sound FX editing, but because of her stare. Very effective!