When The Exorcist hit theaters in 1973, it became instantly ingrained in pop culture. This shocking and influential blockbuster has never fully escaped the public’s subconscious, to the point of shaping how both Catholic and Protestant congregations view demonic possession. For those of us too young to remember pre-1973, it’s hard to imagine a world where the average Christian didn’t in some way believe that, if demonic possession is real, it looks like Linda Blair spewing split pea soup and masturbating with a crucifix.
Initially, The Exorcist received mixed responses from critics in spite of widespread praise from audiences. ‘Praise’ might be too strong a word in some circumstances, but there was at least an acknowledgment of the film’s effectiveness, and the public voiced their support of the film with their money. As time has progressed, and computer-generated effects have become standard, The Exorcist has often been accused of being silly, boring, and generally unimpressive.
Critical response has aged inversely. It’s no longer uncommon for the stuffiest of cinema snobs to praise the film to no end. This is largely due to Blatty’s attention to character development and plot, and Friedkin’s deliberate direction. It’s hard not to respect The Exorcist both culturally and aesthetically – especially when you consider how often it’s referenced and imitated to this day.
Wanna know how much I love The Exorcist? Enough to visit Georgetown for the specific purpose of capturing this photo:
Like any film critic, I could sit here and blather about The Exorcist to death. As much as I adore the film, I generally don’t care what anyone has to say about it. Your opinion probably won’t be a reaction I haven’t come across before, and as such, each Exorcist think-piece out there is just a waste of everyone’s time. I’ll do you all a favor and avoid beating this dead horse any longer than I have to, and get to the real topic at hand:
Exorcist Rip-Offs!
In the film industry, where there is significant financial return, there is also a long line of filmmakers and production companies just chomping at the bit to ride that success all the way to the bank. The immediate aftermath of the film’s release brought us a host of imitators – some of them decent, most of them awful. These rip-offs come in a few flavors, none of which are mutually exclusive:
- Direct rip-offs made throughout the ‘70s specifically to capitalize on the film’s success
- Screenplays that were altered to include a possession subplot, because that’s trendy and profitable now
- Explicit parodies of the film
Chances are, you’ve already seen several movies that pay homage to The Exorcist, but its most direct rip-offs have long since faded into obscurity, and for good reason. A shocking number of them are bat-shit crazy, in both concept and execution, and some are just flat-out unwatchable. In my exploration of what essentially amounts to its own sub-genre, there were some notable highlights. Bear in mind that “notable” does not necessarily mean “good.”
Abby (1974)
Abby is one of the most notoriously shameless Exorcist rip-offs out there, and it’s obvious that it was rushed into theaters to squeeze the last few coins out of post-Exorcist America’s piggy bank. Abby was a little careless with how much material was borrowed, and it didn’t take long for Warner Brothers to file a suit, forcing its distributor to pull it from the big screen. There are whole lines of dialog lifted from The Exorcist, and the way the premise unfolds is fairly similar. It was directed by a man named William Girdler, and shockingly enough, this isn’t going to be the last time he appears on this list.
This one is a straight-up Blaxploitation film, and even co-stars Blacula himself, William Marshall. The titular character, played by Carol Speed in her only memorable role, is a happily-married woman settling down in the Kentucky suburbs with her husband Emmett. Abby’s father-in-law, Garrett, is on an archaeological dig in Nigeria, and finds a box with a huge dick on it. Opening the box unleashes Eshu, an African spirit. Eshu is a trickster, and is also known to be the “god” of:
- Chaos
- High winds
- Roads
…how exciting.
Instead of “wasting time” with plot, the film dives right in to the demonic activity. Because the plot needs him to, Eshu possesses Abby. The mild-mannered, church-going housewife and marriage counselor suddenly becomes aggressive…and excruciatingly horny. She makes advances toward her father-in-law, gets a little too kinky in bed with her husband, and shows up in bars to fuck random strangers.
After a string of scenes where Abby/Eshu gaslight the rest of the cast by pretending not to be possessed, Abby’s husband and father-in-law track her down to a bar, and the final 15 minutes is a public exorcism that is ultimately successful. The strangest aspect of this finale is that, at one point, it is revealed that Abby is really possessed by an Eshu wannabe, not Eshu himself…but then the script forgets about that little detail, and it’s left ambiguous in the end.
Abby is an obviously low-budget film, and in spite of a few attempts to elevate it beyond Z-grade exploitation, it fails at pretty much every turn. However, it’s those failures that make it watchable. Carol Speed’s over-the-top performance as Abby is the best part of this movie, if only because of how awkward her line delivery is in every single scene. It’s extremely entertaining, and I highly recommend it if you enjoy campy, schlocky horror films. It’s actually a fairly brisk watch, as the best so-bad-they’re-good films are, and I can almost guarantee it exists somewhere on YouTube if you really want to track it down.
Repossessed (1990)
Repossessed could have been completely unwatchable, and for some, I’m sure it still is. However, this Leslie Nielsen parody did the only thing it could do to set it apart from the shitty Naked Gun derivatives that time forgot – it cast Linda Blair herself as the possessed lead.
The film concerns Father Jebediah Mayii, who, in a scenario that generally plays out as it does in The Exorcist, casts the devil out of Nancy Aglet (Blair). Years later, Nancy has settled down in the suburbs with her husband and two children. She becomes possessed once more (repossessed, if you will…) when the devil is able to track her down through her television set. Nancy begins spewing split pea soup everywhere, and randomly becomes violent and scary. Her son is convinced that it must be PMS, but after Nancy goes through a rather silly diagnostic process, she reaches out to a local priest named Father Luke in hopes that he will perform an exorcism.
When the Catholic church approves the procedure, they do so under one condition – that TV-preacher couple Ernest and Fanny are allowed to televise the event for the world. The devil attempts to use this press coverage for his own purposes, but ultimately fails when it is revealed that Satan absolutely hates Rock ‘n Roll. After a performance of “Devil With a Blue Dress On,” the devil is driven from Nancy’s body.
As far as films of this kind are concerned, Repossessed really isn’t as awful as it sounds. Some of the jokes are fairly clever, although they are more sparse than the ones you’ll find in Airplane!, which had a much tighter script. I’d still take this over the Naked Gun films any day, and it’s a solid, straightforward parody.
Seytan (1974)
I’m not devoting much time to this one. Some of you may be familiar with Turkey’s strange habit of producing rip-offs of every major American blockbuster during the 70’s and 80’s – a concept introduced to the masses when we found out about Turkish Star Wars. Seytan is exactly what you think. A young girl is possessed by the devil because she plays around with a Ouija Board too much. It doesn’t deviate much from The Exorcist, except in quality.
The Sexorcist (1974)
a.k.a. L’Ossessa, Enter the Devil, The Devil Obsession, and The Eerie Midnight Horror Show
In case you couldn’t tell by the ungodly number of alternate titles, this one is pure Italian Eurotrash. While I’ve chosen “The Sexorcist” as the primary title, it’s known by those other names just as often. Deep down, you have always known that a film called “The Sexorcist” must exist somewhere.
Contrary to the name, this isn’t really a pornographic remake or spoof. There certainly is sex in the film, but it’s movie sex, not porn sex.
Danila, our victim this time around, is an art student looking for a souvenir from a creepy church she visits. She buys a sculpture of the crucifixion. Upon arriving home, she watches her mother engage in some hardcore S&M with her lover Mario, and becomes upset. She then has a hallucination of the Jesus sculpture coming to life and making love to her. Later, she sees a shadowy figure that knocks her down, and suddenly she’s a ridiculous nympho.
Danila spends most of her time masturbating, but when her parents walk in, she tries to have sex with her father. They decide to sedate her, and she has another dream in which she’s driven to a creepy cult ceremony, meets Satan, and is then crucified. Afterward, Danila begins to display the stigmata, and when it’s determined that she’s definitely possessed, she’s shipped off to an isolated convent, where shit REALLY hits the fan.
This may be one of the most eventful final acts of any of the Exorcist rip-offs. In a lengthy sequence, Danila, now foaming at the mouth, tries to suck off the priest, then whips him mercilessly until he’s dead. It’s fun for the whole family.
For a film called The Sexorcist, this one is actually somewhat competent, but nowhere near perfect. I think the Italians were on to something when they decided that what The Exorcist really needed was more sex. I’m totally okay with that.
The House of Exorcism (1975)
I really hesitated to include this one, but it exemplifies some of the strange ways The Exorcist’s success was exploited. In 1973, acclaimed filmmaker Mario Bava released a film called Lisa and the Devil. It was a beautifully surreal mystery full of densely saturated colors about a woman who, through various circumstances, is forced to spend the night in a creepy old Spanish mansion. She sees an old painting that depicts the devil, and quickly notices that the butler at this mansion looks very similar. The rest of the film devolves into a Technicolor nightmare, and while most would say it falls apart rather quickly, I enjoyed every minute of it.
When Lisa and the Devil was released, it did fine on the festival circuit, but never gained much traction beyond that. Then, The Exorcist happened. Alfredo Leone, Mario Bava’s producer on the film, approached Bava and asked if he’d be willing to shoot an exorcism subplot. Bava outsourced this to his son Lamberto (who would go on to have a successful career in his own right), and the resulting film became The House of Exorcism.
As you can imagine, shooting one film to insert into another didn’t turn out so well, and The House of Exorcism became an incoherent mess. The scenes that were re-shoots are painfully obvious, and there are whole portions of Lisa and the Devil that make even less sense when you try to shoehorn in the new material. I still recommend seeing Lisa and the Devil at least once, now that a complete version exists, but The House of Exorcism is just a pain in the ass to sit through – especially knowing that, underneath the shoddy re-shoots and poor editing, is a good movie.
The Manitou (1978)
Finally, we return to William Girdler. After the release of Abby, Girdler would go on to direct a knock-off Pam Grier film, a Jaws knock-off called Grizzly, and Project: Kill, itself derived from Sam Peckinpah’s The Killer Elite. The production company that Girdler was bound to, American International Pictures, had a reputation similar to what Asylum has today – that is to say, they don’t really release movies, they release derivatives of movies. Mockbusters, if you will. After freeing himself from his contract with AIP, he finally had the opportunity to make a more expensive film based on a novel – The Manitou. Unfortunately, Girdler would die in a helicopter crash before the film’s premiere.
The Manitou is special. You might have heard this word before, particularly in reference to Native American folklore. It’s an Algonquian word that essentially translates to “spirit.” Over the years, it’s had many connotations, but for the purpose of this film, it’s an angry medicine man.
The Manitou has some real pedigree behind it. Tony Curtis plays a major role, and even Burgess Meredith is in the cast. Michael Ansara, Hollywood’s go-to for “generic Native American guy” is here too. The film certainly looks like a mid- to high-budget production of its day.
Karen is a normal young woman who develops a strange tumor on the back of her neck that grows at an alarming rate. Her doctors are baffled, and they run some tests. Karen reports that the growth feels as if it’s moving, and soon enough, we discover that there is a fetus inside this seemingly-benign lump. The tests seem to really piss this fetus off, and it becomes angry.
After at least an hour of “serious movie,” the film finally delivers what it’s been hinting at during the course of its entire run-time. The growth is actually a Native American shaman, who has attempted to reincarnate himself in order to exact revenge on the white people who drove him out of his land and massacred his people. Karen’s boyfriend has the bright idea of contacting another medicine man to, ya know, fight fire with fire. In the end, Karen and the Manitou duke it out in one of the most out-of-place finales you may ever see in a movie that tries so hard to take itself seriously.
I know that plot synopsis doesn’t sound much like The Exorcist, but the story unfolds in nearly the same way. It’s as if it were an adaptation of both source novels, The Exorcist and The Manitou, at the same time. While there are plenty of script problems, I recommend this over all others simply for the balls-out craziness of the concept, and the seriousness with which it’s treated.
There are far too many films that I could add to this list, so I’ll just stop here. In truth, ripping off The Exorcist is something that happens even today. I’m not just talking about including the occasional homage either…
It really is that influential.