I had seen The Exorcist earlier than, but it surely was an much more disturbing expertise to observe it body by body. That’s what my mates and I did within the early Nineteen Nineties, after we have been highschool college students engaged on a category venture concerning the historical past of subliminal messaging in media.
We adjusted the degrees on essentially the most subtle stereo we might discover to isolate that half on the very finish of the Beatles’ “Strawberry Fields Eternally” the place a distorted voice supposedly says, “I buried Paul.” A era earlier than us, that brief clip of audio fortified conspiracy theories that Paul McCartney (nonetheless with us immediately) had truly died in 1966. We studied a 1973 ebook known as Subliminal Seduction by Wilson Bryan Key, about how covert messages may very well be deployed as gross sales instruments. The 5 of us struggled to search out the nude figures he claimed have been hidden within the ice cubes of outdated liquor advertisements. (And a few of us have been actually wanting.)
We additionally went to the video retailer to hire a replica of The Exorcist, which had lengthy been rumored to comprise subliminal imagery aimed toward disturbing viewers in methods they might by no means totally comprehend. We tried to go body by body by way of the 1973 demonic-possession movie, or at the very least second by second, as painstakingly because the crude tech of pausing and unpausing a VHS participant would permit.
Then we discovered one thing. The younger priest Father Karras (performed by Jason Miller) has a dream about his just lately deceased mom descending the steps right into a subway station with an agonized expression on her face. We Catholic college youngsters understood what that represented—a descent into hell, little question. However that was symbolism, not subliminal-ism. Within the midst of that sequence, nevertheless, comes a split-second flash adopted by the momentary look of a horrid white face, sneering with decayed tooth, eyes pooling in pink sores. It’s terrifying—however barely perceptible.
The face seems for less than a handful of frames, and whereas that may be sufficient for a viewer to briefly register the picture, it’s not lengthy sufficient for one to really grasp it. Moviegoers in 1973 would have been left not sure about what, if something, they’d simply seen, creating fertile floor for terror. We counted that as proof that there actually have been subliminal strategies at play in The Exorcist.
Whereas that pallid demonic face is unnerving, it’s additionally clearly an individual in make-up, intentionally slipped into the edit. However as we continued to parse the film, we discovered one thing our minds couldn’t clarify as simply.
It occurs about 49 minutes into the movie, when the possessed younger lady, Regan (performed by Linda Blair), thrashes on her mattress as a crew of medical doctors go to her house. Her eyes roll again and her throat bulges grotesquely (each successfully creepy make-up results). Then she vaults onto her toes, hauls again her hand, and knocks one of many approaching medical doctors throughout the room.
There are a variety of fast cuts within the sequence, and as we paused and unpaused, searching for hidden photos, we noticed the younger lady’s face abruptly distort. Her eyes grew to become fathomless black pits, her hair appeared to curve into horns, and her face abruptly grew to become extra stoic and imposing. We halted on the picture, observing these empty sockets.
