Remarkably, given its age, the film has a lifetime box office gross of \u00a3350million.<\/p>\n
It has spawned scores of other horror films and franchises, including Nightmare On Elm Street, The Conjuring, Resident Evil and The Ring and The Nun, as well as a plethora of low-budget \u201cslasher\u201d flicks. The Exorcist\u2019s major influence on pop culture was marked by Universal Pictures this year.<\/p>\n
Long-awaited sequel The Exorcist: Believer was the first in a new trilogy that features smaller roles for Blair, now 64, and Ellen Burstyn, who, at 91, reprises her role as Regan\u2019s mother Chris MacNeil.<\/p>\n
Original director Friedkin died in August this year aged 87 \u2013 two months before the release of Believer. Blair was also hired as a consultant, to guide the film\u2019s two starring youngsters \u2013 Lidya Jewett, 16, and Olivia O\u2019Neill, 15 \u2013 through the rigours of playing teenagers possessed by evil incarnate.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
\n
On set herself five decades ago, Blair suffered a serious spinal injury during one scene of violently thrashing and jerking her body around. This developed into scoliosis that left her in chronic pain for years. She says now: \u201cIt really affected my health negatively for a long time.\u201d<\/p>\n
Several cast and crew members died unexpectedly during shooting of The Exorcist, and production had to be halted after a mysterious electrical fire burned down the entire set.<\/p>\n
At one stage, a priest was called in to conduct a real-life exorcism and Friedkin later admitted: \u201cIt was only by the grace of God that nobody was killed or injured.\u201d<\/p>\n
Late Oscar-winning screenwriter William Peter Blatty based the movie on his own book of the same name. In 2010, it was placed on America\u2019s National Film Registry by Congress.<\/p>\n
Though it is one of only a handful of horror classics to make it into the august archive, director Friedkin insisted he did not set out to make a horror movie at all, but saw it as \u201ca film about the mysteries of faith\u201d.<\/p>\n
But he added: \u201cIt\u2019s easier for people to call it a horror film. Or a great horror film. Or the greatest horror film ever made.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n[ad_2]\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
[ad_1] Iconic \u2018levitation\u2019 scene from the 1973 movie (Image: Allstar Picture Library Ltd \/ Alamy Stock Photo) \u201cOn December 26, a movie called The Exorcist opened in theatres across the country…and since then all Hell has broken loose.\u201d That opening sentence from a Newsweek article 50 years ago was written barely two weeks after the …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":15874,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[765],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/farratanews.online\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15872"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/farratanews.online\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/farratanews.online\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/farratanews.online\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/farratanews.online\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15872"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/farratanews.online\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15872\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/farratanews.online\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/15874"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/farratanews.online\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15872"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/farratanews.online\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15872"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/farratanews.online\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15872"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}