The Big Picture
The Exorcist: The Version You’ve Never Seen was created by director William Friedkin to restore scenes that were cut from the original film, much to the writer William Peter Blatty’s dismay. The new version adds a few minutes of footage, impacting the overall tone of the film and offering a more open interpretation of the story’s message. Some viewers objected to the changes, finding them disruptive or too different from the original cut, but the restored ending conveys a sense of hope that aligns with the film’s deeper themes about faith.
I don’t know if Warner Bros.’s claim that The Exorcist is the “scariest movie of all time” is objectively true, but it is one of only three movies to scare the hell out of me on first viewing. And the second. And the third. Familiarity eventually bled out the scares, but I appreciated the film more after that initial, visceral reaction passed. Frankly, it’s hard now to think of The Exorcist as a horror film; its performances, its themes, and its presentation all point more to a drama about faith and spirituality, one even an agnostic can appreciate, and generations of filmgoers have come to regard as a classic. Its subject matter and its status have made all attempts at sequels and franchising seem particularly tacky, though I suppose we’ll see what comes of the new trilogy that begins with The Exorcist: Believer., which opens this coming weekend. For some, the original film’s “instant classic” status also makes an endeavor like The Exorcist: The Version You’ve Never Seen, an extended version of the film released in 2000, unpalatable on arrival.
The Version You’ve Never Seen was one of several alternate cuts of famous movies put out in the wake of the Star Wars special editions. The timing did not help endear this new take on The Exorcist to its detractors. Yet the impetus for The Version You’ve Never Seen went back to the original’s production and conflicts between its director and its writer-producer. Just what were the points of contention between the two? And is The Exorcist: The Version You’ve Never Seen really worth seeing?
The Exorcist’s Writer Always Had Reservations About the Theatrical Cut
Image via Warner Bros. Pictures
The opening credits of The Exorcist give a possessory card to the author of the original novel, William Peter Blatty. Blatty also wrote the screenplay and acted as the film’s producer. But he did not have final cut, nor was he clear to override decisions by director William Friedkin. Blatty had championed Friedkin as a potential filmmaker for The Exorcist after seeing his work on The French Connection, but the two never saw eye to eye on certain aspects of the adaptation process.
In a reversal from many Hollywood productions, Friedkin came onto The Exorcist arguing for greater fidelity to the book, while Blatty’s initial screenplay condensed the story and deviated from the novel’s structure. The two worked together to revise the script, becoming fast friends in the process. But if Blatty the writer found Friedkin a pleasure, Blatty the producer was at his mercy. New to the producer’s role, Blatty was unsure how to manage filming of The Exorcist and was even advised against being on set. Friedkin’s reputation for difficult and mercurial behavior proved true. After one argument ended in Blatty offhandedly “firing” Friedkin, assuming they would make amends later, a small fleet of lawyers informed Blatty that he had no authority to dismiss the director.
At that point, Blatty washed his hands of The Exorcist, at least from a producer’s standpoint. The film went over schedule and over budget which, along with its lack of name stars and its adjacency if not membership in the horror genre, gave Warners little hope for it. But when Friedkin showed Blatty his initial cut of the film, he was elated.
That cut, however, hadn’t yet been shown to the studio. While Friedkin had final cut over The Exorcist and was infamous among its crew for his controlling, perfectionist ways, he was receptive to suggestions by Warners. From their notes, he trimmed around 12 minutes of film without consulting or involving Blatty (who would later sue Friedkin and Warners for freezing him out of post-production). On the chopping block were some of the writer’s favorite scenes, scenes he considered pivotal to the story’s theological message. “I intended [The Exorcist] to be an apostolic work, to help people in their faith,” the devoutly Catholic Blatty once told The Washingtonian, and he felt that certain scenes made that plain.
Friedkin, not a religious man himself, wasn’t interested in being so direct. He felt the film as a whole illustrated Blatty’s point without stating it, but he was happy to leave the film version of The Exorcist more open to interpretation. His shorter cut hit theaters, became a cultural phenomenon, and made plenty of money for all parties. Friedkin and Blatty repaired their friendship after production, but the writer routinely hounded the director over the missing material. “I used to call him a sore winner,” said Friedkin, who resisted any alterations until the film’s 25th anniversary, at which time The Version You’ve Never Seen was assembled.
Changes to 2000 Version of ‘The Exorcist’ Are Small but Significant
Image via Warner Bros. Pictures
For any newcomers to The Version You’ve Never Seen, know that it isn’t a whole new version of The Exorcist. It’s not like the two conflicting versions of an Exorcist prequel. The closest comparison, at least in recent years, may be The Godfather Part III and its re-edit, The Godfather Coda: The Death of Michael Corleone. In both cases, the new cut is, by and large, the same film; it’s the same story, the same takes, the same score, largely the same look, and the same editing bar the minor adjustments that amount to a few minutes’ difference. But those few minutes make all the difference.
Where The Godfather Coda was a subtractive re-cut, taking out chunks of the original, The Version You’ve Never Seen was additive. Friedkin restored most of the material he took out after his first screening with Blatty (though not all — on the film’s Blu-Ray, he mentions several scenes couldn’t be put back in due to lost audio tracks). For the first two thirds of the film, these scenes arguably affect plot and logic more than the tenor of the overall piece. A new opening uses shots of the Georgetown location to create an impressionistic first look at the main setting before jumping to Father Merrin’s dig in Iraq. A doctor’s visit added after Regan’s birthday shows an early look at her declining health and explains her mother’s insistence at a later party scene that she should take her Ritalin. The infamous spider walk provides a compounding terror to the scene where Chris MacNeil (Ellen Burstyn) learns that her director is dead, and Father Karras (Jason Miller) spends a bit more time investigating the possession by listening to recordings of Regan’s real voice.
It’s in the last third that the changes start to impact the overall tone of the film. In the theatrical cut of The Exorcist, the exorcism itself begins almost immediately after Father Merrin (Max Von Sydow) arrives in Georgetown. In The Version You’ve Never Seen, there is an interlude while Karras fetches the necessities where Merrin and Chris interact. It breaks the tension set off by Merrin’s arrival in that infamous shaft of light while letting him show kindness and frailty before Chris. Another such interlude comes after the first round of exorcism. While the theatrical cut has a silent shot of the two priests sitting on the stairs, the re-cut lets Karras ask: “Why this girl?” To which Merrin replies, “I think the point is to make us despair.”
This was one of the key exchanges Blatty objected to leaving out of the theatrical cut. It was necessary to state the demon’s true target, and what the priests were up against. And the originally intended ending, in the novel and added to The Version You’ve Never Seen, was necessary, in Blatty’s mind, to confirm that the priests succeeded. The original cut of The Exorcist ends with Father Dyer alone with his thoughts after his last goodbye to the MacNeils as the unsettling melody from “Tubular Bells” plays. Restored for the re-cut was Dyer’s returning Karras’s St. Joseph medallion to Chris and his picking up Karras’s slightly caustic friendship with Lt Kinderman, two signs that his spirit lives on and that the world, at least for the moment, has been put to rights.
Blatty so wanted that ending confirmed because it upset him that many took The Exorcist as a horror story with a bleak, defeated ending. And When The Version You’ve Never Seen was released, some objected to the film gaining a “happy” ending. Others, like Roger Ebert, found most of the changes disruptive to the pace of the film and out of place with their perception of its tone. It was the kind of open-to-interpretation reaction Friedkin embraced, but he felt he owed Blatty a cut of the film he would be happy with, and by the time both versions were released on Blu-Ray, Friedkin himself had come around to preferring The Version You’ve Never Seen.
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Which is the best version of The Exorcist?
Image via Warner Bros. Pictures
My introduction to The Exorcist was through The Version You’ve Never Seen. In fact, I only saw the theatrical cut for the first time in anticipation of this article. So I can’t possibly have the experience of seeing the film as it was, and then learning what was added; my starting point will always be the re-cut.
With that said, I can see the case against some of the additions made to The Version You’ve Never Seen. When watching the theatrical cut, I missed the initial stages of Regan’s illness and Chris’s first talk with the doctor, but I didn’t even notice the absence of the opening shots of Georgetown, Karras listening to Regan’s voice, or the handful of demonic flash frames Friedkin scattered throughout the re-cut. The scene where Chris reacts to the director’s death ends rather abruptly without the spider walk – but it ends abruptly with it too. I don’t think any of these changes hurt the film in The Version You’ve Never Seen, but they’re easily done without.
But Blatty had it right on the third act. The exorcism’s abrupt beginning in the theatrical cut might sustain a taut atmosphere for some, but it leaves no space for Merrin to be re-established as a character rather than a plot device. Don’t forget, he’s been completely absent from the film since the opening in Iraq. Don’t forget, too, that Karras, for all the help he’s given Chris up to that moment, is still full of doubts. For the seasoned exorcist to show this distraught mother some cheer and good humor must be a godsend to her (no pun intended), and a desperately needed moment of light at that moment in the film.
Regarding the priests’ conversation, Friedkin’s argument that The Exorcist illustrated the demon’s aims without that scene is convincing. Even in the theatrical cut, the demon indirectly indicates his real targets are Karras, Merrin, and the people in the house more than Regan herself. But the priests don’t have the kind of oppressive, didactic monologue that brings so many modern films to a screeching halt. It’s a brief exchange that makes sense within the context of the film. Why wouldn’t the doubting Karras ask such a question of the experienced Merrin?
Frankly, I don’t see how anyone could think the devil won even in the theatrical cut of The Exorcist. The priests may have given their lives to drive him out of Regan, but they did so, and Karras found his faith again. Dyer doesn’t need to pass on his medallion or his banter to confirm that. But what the final conversation of The Version You’ve Never Seen illustrates is that the people Karras left behind and sacrificed for can heal and get on with their lives. For a story that is ultimately more about faith than frights, that is an appropriate capper, and why The Exorcist: The Version You’ve Never Seen is worth taking in.
This post was modified on 2023-10-04 05:41:53