The Exorcist

Warner Bros. Home Entertainment is celebrating the 40th anniversary of William Friedkin's horror film "The Exorcist" with a Blu-ray release featuring the theatrical version and an extended director's cut. The new release of the blockbuster, which won Oscars for William Peter Blatty's screenplay (based on his novel) and for sound, arrives Oct. 8 in anticipation of Halloween. "After my initial cut, I took out 12 minutes before I released it in theaters,"  Friedkin said in a statement released Thursday.

Coming off the success of the groundbreaking horror movie "The Exorcist" and the Academy Award-winning cop thriller "The French Connection," director William Friedkin seemed to have the magic touch in the 1970s - until he made "Sorcerer. " Adapted from the the 1950 Georges Arnaud novel "Le Salaire de la peur" ("The Wages of Fear") and inspired by the 1953 Henri-Georges Clouzot film of that name, "Sorcerer" is a taut thriller about four outcasts transporting truckloads of high explosives over treacherous South American terrain.

Long before the age of computer-generated special effects, Marcel Vercoutere helped create a scene widely considered among the most terrifying in movie-going history. In "The Exorcist," the 1973 horror film that became a pop-culture phenomenon, the head of a helpless young girl twists completely around as a young priest battles the demon that inhabits her body. With its wild, animated eyes, the life-size robot used as a stand-in for actress Linda Blair was built by Vercoutere, the film's special effects director, with help from its chief makeup artist, Dick Smith.

Warner Bros. Home Entertainment is celebrating the 40th anniversary of William Friedkin's horror film "The Exorcist" with a Blu-ray release featuring the theatrical version and an extended director's cut. The new release of the blockbuster, which won Oscars for William Peter Blatty's screenplay (based on his novel) and for sound, arrives Oct. 8 in anticipation of Halloween. "After my initial cut, I took out 12 minutes before I released it in theaters,"  Friedkin said in a statement released Thursday.

William Friedkin is sorry. In his new memoir of a career in the director's chair, he's sorry he almost got that stunt driver on "The French Connection" killed. He's sorry he fired all those cinematographers, except for the ones who deserved it. He must be sorry he directed "Deal of the Century," or he'd have found someplace in the book to mention it. And he can't be too proud of the three ex-wives, or he'd have given them each their own sentence, instead of making them share. Friedkin's not sorry he became a director, though - just amazed.

Coming off the success of the groundbreaking horror movie "The Exorcist" and the Academy Award-winning cop thriller "The French Connection," director William Friedkin seemed to have the magic touch in the 1970s - until he made "Sorcerer. " Adapted from the the 1950 Georges Arnaud novel "Le Salaire de la peur" ("The Wages of Fear") and inspired by the 1953 Henri-Georges Clouzot film of that name, "Sorcerer" is a taut thriller about four outcasts transporting truckloads of high explosives over treacherous South American terrain.

"The Exorcist" originally was released just after Christmas in 1973. Twenty-seven years later, the video (rental only) and DVD (Warner, $25) of the "version you've never seen" has been unleashed this holiday week. The new version of the William Friedkin horror classic made audience's heads spin in its theatrical release a few months ago. Several scenes that had been cut from the original were reinstated, including the demonically possessed Regan's (Linda Blair) spider-like walk down the stairs.

I wake uncomfortably in the night, my body scrunched into a corner of the bed, impaled by three pairs of spindly legs. There is one child curled in a ball near my feet, the blanket pulled so tightly over her head, I wonder how she can even breathe. Another is pressed against my back, her arm wrapped around my neck as if she were choking me. Their big sister lies along the bed's edge, clutching a teddy bear in her sleep. They've learned, with practice, how to climb into my bed without waking me.

Writer-actor-director Harold Ramis believes that the clean-talking, gross-free "Ghostbusters" may break forever the reign of raunch that has plagued youth comedy since "Animal House." If so, it will have been entirely by design. Ramis and Dan Aykroyd, co-authors of "Ghostbusters" (which, with $225 million in ticket sales, is now the most successful comedy in movie history), purposely subtracted nudity, bad language and general raunchiness from the script.

The power of Christ has compelled Richard Chamberlain and Brooke Shields to take two of the lead roles in a new stage version of William Peter Blatty's "The Exorcist," which is scheduled to open at the Geffen Playhouse on July 11. Chamberlain will play Father Merrin, the priest who attempts to exorcise a little girl possessed by a demon. The role was played by Max von Sydow in the 1973 film version of Blatty's book. Shields will take on the role of Chris MacNeil, an actress and the girl's  mother, who was played by Ellen Burstyn in the movie.

William Friedkin is sorry. In his new memoir of a career in the director's chair, he's sorry he almost got that stunt driver on "The French Connection" killed. He's sorry he fired all those cinematographers, except for the ones who deserved it. He must be sorry he directed "Deal of the Century," or he'd have found someplace in the book to mention it. And he can't be too proud of the three ex-wives, or he'd have given them each their own sentence, instead of making them share. Friedkin's not sorry he became a director, though - just amazed.

Long before the age of computer-generated special effects, Marcel Vercoutere helped create a scene widely considered among the most terrifying in movie-going history. In "The Exorcist," the 1973 horror film that became a pop-culture phenomenon, the head of a helpless young girl twists completely around as a young priest battles the demon that inhabits her body. With its wild, animated eyes, the life-size robot used as a stand-in for actress Linda Blair was built by Vercoutere, the film's special effects director, with help from its chief makeup artist, Dick Smith.

Two questions immediately presented themselves when it was announced that "The Exorcist" was going to be done onstage: How? And why? At the show's premiere Wednesday at the Geffen Playhouse, the creators seemed to be searching for answers to these challenges. God doesn't appear to be on their side. The how, at least on a visual level, turns out to be far more interesting than the why, which leads to all kinds of armchair moralizing and faux philosophizing. But fans of William Friedkin's 1973 film - a work that has caused more bad dreams than any other movie in Hollywood history, if my childhood is any guide - shouldn't expect any ostentatious spinning of heads.

Few films conjure up the nightmarish movie memories that"The Exorcist"does. William Friedkin's 1973 adaptation of William Peter Blatty's bestselling novel famously spurred reports of screaming, fainting and even moviegoers running from theaters as 12-year-old Regan MacNeil, possessed by an ancient, powerful evil, spat out obscenities and ugly rivers of dark green bile. Religious leaders condemned the movie as sacrilegious; some cautioned that watching the film and its head-spinning imagery would endanger the soul.

Always a man of few (if any) words, the latter half of the enduring comedy-magic duo Penn & Teller will help give a visual voice to the Geffen Playhouse's upcoming stage adaptation of "The Exorcist. " Scheduled to open July 11, the adaptation features Teller as "creative consultant," which sounds a little like he'll be responsible for honing the production's wordless reactions given his day job as silent but game foil to his longtime partner, the garrulous Penn Jillette. In reality, however, this isn't the first time Teller has ventured behind the stage, where Penn & Teller have made a home in Vegas for six nights a week since 2001.

The power of Christ has compelled Richard Chamberlain and Brooke Shields to take two of the lead roles in a new stage version of William Peter Blatty's "The Exorcist," which is scheduled to open at the Geffen Playhouse on July 11. Chamberlain will play Father Merrin, the priest who attempts to exorcise a little girl possessed by a demon. The role was played by Max von Sydow in the 1973 film version of Blatty's book. Shields will take on the role of Chris MacNeil, an actress and the girl's  mother, who was played by Ellen Burstyn in the movie.

Two questions immediately presented themselves when it was announced that "The Exorcist" was going to be done onstage: How? And why? At the show's premiere Wednesday at the Geffen Playhouse, the creators seemed to be searching for answers to these challenges. God doesn't appear to be on their side. The how, at least on a visual level, turns out to be far more interesting than the why, which leads to all kinds of armchair moralizing and faux philosophizing. But fans of William Friedkin's 1973 film - a work that has caused more bad dreams than any other movie in Hollywood history, if my childhood is any guide - shouldn't expect any ostentatious spinning of heads.

Always a man of few (if any) words, the latter half of the enduring comedy-magic duo Penn & Teller will help give a visual voice to the Geffen Playhouse's upcoming stage adaptation of "The Exorcist. " Scheduled to open July 11, the adaptation features Teller as "creative consultant," which sounds a little like he'll be responsible for honing the production's wordless reactions given his day job as silent but game foil to his longtime partner, the garrulous Penn Jillette. In reality, however, this isn't the first time Teller has ventured behind the stage, where Penn & Teller have made a home in Vegas for six nights a week since 2001.

In the annals of demonology, William Peter Blatty falls somewhere between St. Augustine and Joss Whedon. He isn't the first person who's ever written about demons and demonic possession, but he has provided us with one of the genre's most memorable novels, 1971's "The Exorcist." There had been disturbing stories before, but nothing -- especially when Blatty teamed up with director William Friedkin for the 1973 screen adaptation -- so terrified audiences about the possibilities of the diabolical in ordinary people's lives.

Perhaps unhappy that Catholics get to throw all those exorcism parties in the movies, David Goyer gives us a demon story in "The Unborn" infused with Jewish folklore, the Kabbalah and, gulp, the memory of Auschwitz. By that description, you'd think the result would be unintentionally funny, deeply offensive or some combination of the two.