Surely this means you haven’t seen Exorcist 2. (Which is actually my favorite of the series.)
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Exorcist III has “that scene”, though…one of the creepiest jump scares. What do you like about 2? I don’t remember a lot, but I think the last time I watched it, it was DVR’ed from cable? And the only time I watched before that was maybe a pan-and-scan version on VHS.
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The single most terrifying scene in film history. Incorporating all three types of scares: 1. The slow burn creepies, 2. the jump scare, and 3. the what-the-fuck. You could do an entire film class on that one scene.
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I liked 3 but don’t remember specifics about it after so long. I thought it was ok. I probably should give it another viewing one of these days. (Haven’t seen any of the later films.)
My perspective on number one is quite possibly affected negatively by so many other’s appreciation of it, specifically their opinion that it says something meaningful and profound about faith, while I think it’s just a well-mounted exploitation movie about the torture of a young girl. I have at least admired its craft in the past, but last time I saw it I was bored. (This was a film class viewing of the spider walk version, so maybe I just like that version even less.)
Number two has some genuinely good (and much more humane) ideas in it, it has some nicely trippy psychedelic scenes, and more laughs than your average Evil Dead movie. It’s been a long time since I’ve seen it, so I don’t know if I can remember many examples, but there was Richard Burton’s alternately catatonic and over acted performance, Linda Blair’s not being up to the task of playing a demon or savior, and James Earl Jones dressed as a giant locust. I don’t think director Boorman always knew when he was being funny.
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True that. And yes, it would be something quite ripe for dissection like you say.
I think the other jump scare that really got me was Mulholland Drive - and that’s probably because I don’t really think of Lynch as anything other than…Lynchian, not really in the horror category. That one came out of literally freaking nowhere. That scene seems to make a lot of lists, too. 
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Ha. My overall impression is remembering it was kinda schlocky in that 70s way (but that I usually love), and whatever cameras they use seem to give it that faded Polaroid look.
Also, the headbands.
As for 1, I don’t think I ever saw the spider walk version. It seems like a movie that everyone should probably watch once if they are horrorheads, but it’s something I want to like more than I really do. As a kid, and not having seen it until much later, it reached epic proportions as far as reputation. I think the idea of being possessed, or people thinking they were possessed, really freaked me out as a kid because I had no real cultural framing for it, so even the movie as it was described to me then gave me the willies, without having had seen it. I tended to have a very active imagination as a kid.
But, as an adult…I think it really works more for people that 100% believe in certain xtian doctrines? Possession movies overall are just…shrug, but watching two guys doing lots of ritual does not have the power for those that don’t really buy into some xtian tenets, I guess?
I also think it’s a product of its day as far as its sensationalist/viral marketing, too, and so people old enough to remember that might have formed opinions about it based on that.
I do like how it has that certain weird thing about 70s movies - they have a certain gloss to what is on screen due to the equipment/film as well as a certain kind of grit because of the time/location that is very hard to characterize.
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