Director William Friedkin last week complained the sequel to his ground-breaking 1973 film The Exorcist sucks runny demon eggs. I can’t disagree, but I will point out that he is responsible for breaking the horror genre in two and dooming us all to a lifetime of rehashed exorcism cliches.
Here, I tackle the meaty subject of why The Exorcist dominates horror culture right to the modern day, and ask if we will ever move on past Satanism, Ouija boards, priests clutching crucfixes, and nuns-nuns-nuns.
UPDATE – BONUS BUCK: I ran out of space in that article to talk about the “Satanic Panic” movement in the ’70s-’90s, a scare-tactics campaign by the American Christian church that grew more shrill by the year with shock media. Satanic Panic was one of the biggest contributors to turning American Christianity, originally more left-leaning, into the movement of Neocon bigots we know today. But I ran across this video preserved on the channel of the excellent archivist Josh Hadley which gives you an adequate taste for the atmosphere of the time. Feast your eyes and ears on the hilariously paranoid conspiracy theorists at Jeremiah Films, with “The Pagan Invasion – Devil Worship – The Rise Of Satanism.” No, this is not a parody.
