Paul Davis shares a rare deleted scene from The Exorcist that shows more of the demon's face and says there will be more to come.
The movie The Exorcist came out in cinemas in 1973. For decades, people would both love and hate it, and it would be called one of the scariest movies ever made. Now, new video of the demon Pazuzu himself has been released to the world. Paul Davis posted the video to his Twitter/X account and also made an important statement of his own.
In the Twitter/X thread, Davis talks more about the background of the shot. It was said that the shot was an early makeup test for Regan. The person in the shot was Eileen Dietz, and Dick Smith did her makeup. Davis also says that The Exorcist director William Friedkin wasn't happy with the footage at first because he thought the makeup wasn't "organic" to what the script said about Regan's body.
Davis says that editor Bud Smith later found the reel and "spliced two frames into the sequence in which Father Karras dreams of his mother." After Friedkin saw the scene, he was so pleased that he asked for the mysterious face to show up in the movie more. He even told Dietz to put on more makeup for more footage, which was added to the scene of Regan in the bed. Dietz would also stand in for Linda Blair in the more dramatic scenes of possession.
Beware the Moon: Remembering "An American Werewolf in London," which came out in 2009, was Paul Davis's first film as a director. He went on to direct "The Body" and "Uncanny Annie" from Blumhouse's Into the Dark short series. Paul will release a commentary video for The Exorcist on Halloween. It will include "10 minutes of never-before-seen outtakes and the full 2-minute makeup test that was used to create the famous "Captain Howdy" face."
What The Exorcist Left Behind
This December will be the 50th anniversary of the release of The Exorcist. Based on the same-named 1971 book, the movie has become a big deal in the world of horror movies. When it first came out, it got mixed reviews, but its bad reputation was enough to get a lot of people to go see it. It was the first horror movie to be nominated for the Academy Award for Best Picture. Even though it didn't win, it did win Best Adapted Screenplay and Best sound. In 2010, it was picked by the Library of Congress to be kept in the National Film Registry of the United States.
The Exorcist was sure to get more movies after it made so much money, won so many awards, and became so famous. Exorcist II: The Heretic (1977) and the famous The Exorcist III (1990) were both straight sequels. Exorcist: The Beginning (2004) and Dominion: Prequel to the Exorcist (2005) were the next two movies.
The Exorcist series is about to start a brand-new storyline. The Exorcist: Believer will be in cinemas on October 6. The movie, which will be directed by David Gordon Green, will be a straight follow-up to the first one from 1973. Ellen Burstyn plays Chris MacNeil, Regan's mother, again. She has to fight monsters again to save the lives of two innocent girls. Reports say that two sequels are being made to make a trio. The second part, The Exorcist: Deceiver, will come out in the spring of 2025.
