(no subject)

[darchildre]

Movie night at Bainbridge. This month, we watched The Exorcist.

Y'know what I forget when I am not watching The Exorcist? I forget the fact that The Exorcist is really frelling dull. Seriously, it's not even the fact that it's a movie from the 70's and I tend to hate those. No. It's just long stretches of tedium and characters that the audience is given no reason to care about, broken up by moments of disgust. I mean, I am willing to accept that other people find it scary. Possibly, if I was a Christian, I would find it scarier (though I kinda doubt it). But I mostly just find it gross, and disgust is way down on my list of Emotions I Want My Horror Films to Elicit*.

It's important to the genre historically, okay, and it's an interesting cultural document but it's neither enjoyable nor edifying to watch and I spent 90% of the movie thinking, "Man, I could be at home watching The Wicker Man right now."

An interesting question was brought up in discussion, though, which I am going to throw out to the internet because I don't watch a lot of possession/exorcism horror. (I find it unpleasant in a way that I don't want my horror films to be.) Are there examples of possession/exorcism horror where the possessed person is male? I can think of some examples of men and boys being possessed in horror film, but not examples of them being exorcised. Do you guys know of any?






*For the record, the list is Terror (the purely mental stuff), Horror (here the body gets involved, so we mix terror with revulsion), Fright (shocks and jumper scares, which are fun but aren't worth much), and then, way down at the bottom, Disgust. I will take Gleeful Humor, of course, but it goes on a different scale.

Comments

[selenak]

Spontanously, the Angel episode I've got you under my skin comes to mind. The person seemingly in need of an exorcism is a boy, with the twist in the story that the boy is actually a little psycho much worse than the demon possessing him and trying to get away from the kid. The (attempted) exorcism sequences are definitely a play on The Exorcist, complete with the demon-via-kid (or so we think) playing mindgames with the wannabe exorcists, Angel and Wesley. It's a pretty dark episode, not only for the twist about the kid but also because it brings up Wesley's dysfunctional and emotionally abusive relationship with his father for the first time in the show.

[james]

The first thing I thought of is Brimstone and Treacle, but I don't recall that they exorcised him (or even made clear he was possessed).

But horror isn't my genre, so it's astounding I knew of one at all!

[scribbled_lore]

Uhm, I'm not sure if this counts but there was an episode of Supernatural in the first season where a demon was possessing people and having them die via crashing a plane. The boys end up exorcising first the co-pilot and then the actual plane itself in the climax of the story. As far as I remember, all of the people who were possessed (definitely 3, maybe 4) were men in their 30's and older and white.

[tricksters_queen]

Though the movie is not exactly about a man being exorcised, Anthony Hopkins starred in "The Rite", and it is about exorcists, and a man does go through an exorcism in it. I would not count this movie as a horror, though I think most of the world does. I found it interesting, not scary.