Summary

The Exorcist’s reputation in the horror genre is unquestioned, but its dignity has been compromised by spoofs and parodies. The Linda Blair impersonation has become tedious and overused, losing its comedic impact over the years. The constant recycling of The Exorcist’s iconic scenes and quotes has overshadowed its profound themes and impact as a piece of art.

Half a century later, there’s no doubt that William Friedkin’s hallmark horror classic, The Exorcist, stood the test of time. But before you get too excited, we should probably give it a breather for a while before we do another spoof. Sure, its reputation in the horror genre is unquestioned, generating sequels, reboots, and copycats to this day, but it comes at a high cost, that being its dignity. Arguably, no other film has become as much a victim of its own success as The Exorcist.

The sight gag of a little girl vomiting pea soup and spinning her head is sure to elicit an eye roll. Coming with it are all the obligatory quotes and graphic scenes in tow that you can already rattle off without having to think too hard. The Linda Blair impersonation is so tedious it might as well come in a glass case with the note “In case of comedy emergency, whip this out” written above it.

So, please, let’s scrap this idea or lift its jersey into the rafters, never to be seen again. Pick the metaphor of your choosing, but let’s stop with this shtick altogether. It hurts knowing that poor William Friedkin died witnessing one of his most powerful scenes recycled more times than an aluminum can, all the power and surreal anguish sucked dry by supposed satires and reality TV ghost-hunting hucksters beating a dead horse.

Hell’s spawn has never left us since it entered our collective consciousness back in 1973. Pazuzu’s possession of little Regan, which has rarely been seen in deleted outtakes, was only temporary, but TV viewers and moviegoers aren’t so lucky to get any such reprieve. Stagehands must be getting sick of mopping up fake green vomit after fifty consecutive years, and we can’t blame them.

Fifty Years of Lack of Imagination With Exorcist Parodies

A perennial ace up the sleeve of any comedy variety show or film production, the Linda-Blair gag has never gone out of style yet, rather astoundingly. Millennials, with no conception of what the joke is commenting on, are likely to know the stunt regardless. In just the last few years, we’ve seen the possession plot parodied in Saturday Night Live during Jenny Ortega’s hosting stint in 2023. To those older viewers, it might seem oddly familiar. That’s for good reason, as the comedy show already did a parody in 1975. Twice in half a century ain’t bad, but the joke has grown embarrassingly flat in the intervening time. Judging by Carol Burnett’s bit in 1974, it wasn’t exactly one of the best SNL parodies, either.

If you have no idea what The Exorcist is, you still likely know what we’re talking about and have seen a demonic teen girl tied to a bed or heard the phrase “the power of Christ compels you,” either from or a talking baby dinosaur, Curly from The Three Stooges, The Simpsons, or the 2016 Ghostbusters reboot, which such as Chris Hemsworth worrying they ruined their career. The demon wasn’t lying when he promised that this hour was his. Little did we know he would take up permanent residence in writers’ rooms after leaving Regan’s body.

Related The Original Exorcist Suffers Drop in Rotten Tomatoes Score Following Believer Release Rotten Tomatoes has released 70 new reviews for The Exorcist, leading to a dip in the movie’s original approval rate.

Vulgar Displays of Power

Though the same idea has possessed the mind of every single comedy writer since 1973, when done correctly, the film homage can still work. No one can integrate these pop cultural tropes into otherwise arbitrary scenes as well as Family Guy creator/writer Seth MacFarlane can. The problem is that even he can’t control his urge to abuse the gimmick, using variations of the same joke multiple times over the show’s run. As a throwaway line, like in Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me, it’s not overstepping any bounds of good taste, but it’s just that, a throwaway line. Mike Myers probably ad-libbed the whole thing on set, and in the rush, it got left in. It doesn’t hold a candle to his best work.

Key and Peele, though it’s one of the best sketch comedy shows, who are typically incisive commentators on society and pop culture, fell victim to the oldest trap in improv/sketch comedy, doing so without adding much to the routine when their turn came to do the bit. No matter where you go, Exorcist jokes are not escaping, as demonstrated by the UK comedy French and Saunders. Everyone in every far-flung spot on the globe eventually succumbs, each one making the same joke forty times in their country as well, as seen in clips from Asia.

Scary Movie 2, though a great parody horror movie, featured a drawn-out recreation of the exorcism idea. Suffice it to say it was already a well-trodden gag at that point in 2001. Maybe more like 1992. Look back into obscure TV comedy shows and syndicated viewing on YouTube, and one can see that the demon-possession skit has been the go-to bit for any skit show out of ideas for a long time, the comedy routine already in very heavy rotation by the nineties.

This is the End, which features some of Jonah Hill’s best moments, and A Haunted House, both filmed in 2013, eagerly waited their turn to run the joke into the ground as if to signal to a new generation that this bit wasn’t going anywhere. For those ready to contact us and inform us of all the examples we missed, we know.

Related The Exorcist: Believer: Why Audiences Hate the Horror Movie The Exorcist: Believer has given horror legacy sequels a bad name.

Casting Out Unclean Spirits

Who’s to blame? Look no further than Linda Blair. That’s unfair, but let us break this one down. As a somewhat sad story to add to The Exorcism’s long and well-documented production lore, Blair’s promising career was pretty much decimated by that one role. Try as she may to get decent roles; the movie industry wanted nothing to do with her. So she was trapped doing mostly B-movie schlock and even more embarrassing low-budget horror films for the rest of her life.

It’s a good thing Linda Blair already had her turn too to reap what the film owed her. Twice as it turns out, though only her 1990 film Repossessed gathered any widespread attention, with most of it being very negative. If Linda would get her spine fractured and be typecast for the rest of her life, she would at least get some paychecks out of it. You can’t blame her for having fun with her infamy and laughing off the ordeal of working with the tightly wound Friedkin.

It’s a shame that it came at the cost of depriving the film of its impact and overshadowing an otherwise profound, intelligent piece of art about the loss of faith and the interaction of psychology, religion, and medicine. The routine simply doesn’t do anyone any favors in the long term.

The world’s biggest Exorcist fanboy, film historian Mark Kermode, said the film maintained the power to shock and amaze. Even when he said that he was dead wrong. The film had already been ruined by one too many duplicates and soulless parodies for any savvy TV or movie addict to take it seriously on a first watch or any subsequent viewing. Every time the girl’s head spins so does William Friedkin in his grave. The original 1973 film, The Exorcist, is available to stream on Pluto TV.

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