I’d like to see people leaving Get Out.
Ever wonder where the whole “Evangelical Christian” thing got started? Right there. Not kidding. The “I Found It” bumper stickers kicked in a little later. A LOT of evangelicals got their fear o’ the devil from that movie. True fact. I was there. “I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness…” Well, maybe not the best minds…
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I remember waiting in the lobby to see ‘Carrie’. Uh, megaplexes were really rare back then. As we watched the audience come out, it didn’t look like they were leaving so much as fleeing. I nudged my friend and said I think this is gonna be good.
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I saw the Exorcist while in a psychedelically enhanced state. To say it messed with my head does not begin to cover it. No lasting effects other than the fact that I will NEVER watch it again!
Coincidentally, I never found quite the same joy in a bowl of pea soup after that either. 
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Are you to be the fourth person ever I’ve encountered who would willingly sit down and watch The Heretic again? I loved it when it came out, and was surprised to hear how much my friends loathed it. Thanks to VHS I was able to watch it at will and did so about half a dozen times. Burton, James Earl Jones, biofeedback, locusts; what’s not to like?
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Not to mention one of Ennio Morricone’s oddest film soundtracks.
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A couple TV screenings, then VHS, then an upgrade to DVD. I don’t know if I would go so far as to say that I love it, but it holds up well.
I’d probably appreciate it more if it had a more consistent tone. Interesting ideas and psychedelic camerawork (and score) and a miscast Burton and Blair undercutting some of what the film is trying to do. (Granted the script does some of that, too.) Of course, they were stuck with Blair, but I’m afraid her performance does not suggest a potential force for great good or great evil. Although, teenaged Blair’s attempted seduction of priest Burton does suggest a potential in great exploitation movies.
I don’t see why anyone who likes Zardoz should reject Heretic, but then again, most people are into Zardoz purely for the memes I fear.
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I was 14, and my parents forbade me seeing the movie. I went anyway. My friends were traumatized, but not me. I thought it was tame, because I’d already read the book. The book was much more frightening.
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Most of those people are just hamming it up for the camera.
The rest are either stoned or tripping balls. I can tell.
Try Michael Haneke if you are in the market for a serious bummer, especially The Seventh Continent and Benny’s Video. He cites Pasolini as a major influence.
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L’esorciccio is a nice parody, made on a low budget, so bad it’s good…
The scariness of a movie seems to have been a selling point for a while. This 1958 turkey that ended up on MST3k had a line on its poster (and maybe in its trailer?) about free burial for anyone who died of fright watching it 
:
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I think that we will never again see anything remotely akin to the reactions to the Exorcist, it was a perfect storm of creativity that confronted audiences with things that they had never seen before (at least at that quality). Now? Like Rome before the fall, nothing is shocking. With images of real horror playing out on our screens every day, the devil possessing a little girl is downright quaint.
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