The Exorcist (film)

Background

In northern Iraq, Father Lankester Merrin finds a stone talisman and a statue of a winged demon on a dig at Hatra. In Georgetown, the actress Chris MacNeil is filming a movie and renting a house, where her twelve-year-old daughter Regan plays alone with a spirit board and makes a 'friend' she calls Captain Howdy. Regan turns violent, tests find nothing, and her mother's director Burke Dennings is found dead below her window. Father Damien Karras, a psychiatrist who counsels Georgetown's priests, tests Regan with tap water he calls holy water, but after 'help me' appears on her skin he asks for an exorcism, which Merrin leads.

Merrin dies of a heart attack; Karras forces the demon into himself and throws himself down the stone stairs. The production ran twice as long as planned and almost three times over budget, with injuries and accidents that fed talk of a curse. Released on December 26, 1973, it drew long queues and reports of viewers fainting, became the first horror film nominated for Best Picture, won Oscars for Blatty's screenplay and for sound, and was added to the National Film Registry in 2010.