Ellen Burstyn’s scenes in ‘The Exorcist’ scared the cast and crew
William Friedkin’s The Exorcist is one of the horror genre’s most iconic films, met with mass hysteria, fainting, and allegedly causing heart attacks upon its 1973 release. The plot follows a teenage Regan, played by Linda Blair, who, across the course of the film, becomes possessed by a mysterious demonic entity.
Blair’s scenes were naturally the most shocking, some of which saw her head turn a full 360 degrees, profusely vomit green bile, scale the stairs in a horrifying spider walk, and stab herself in the crotch with a crucifix. The latter is hair-raising enough on its own, but that the entire graphic scene unfolds in front of Regan’s helpless mother give it yet more edge.
Played by Ellen Burstyn, Regan’s mother, Chris, had a gruelling time throughout the film, constantly forced to react to the physical and emotional terror her daughter was experiencing. And it was Burstyn’s performance that put everyone on set on edge, rather than the body horror scenes Blair undertook.
The steely intensity of her performance bought fresh fear to an already shaken set. Filmed over nine months, the film was subject to all manner of freaky incidents which continually delayed filming and spooked the crew. The first sign of things to come was a fire that broke out on set, which saw the McNeil house burn down.
While it wasn’t strictly paranormal – the result of a bad electric circuit – it shut down filming for six weeks, and as soon as the new set was ready for filming, the sprinkler system shut down. Tensions started to mount as the process dragged on, and many of the actors involved in the horror hit were subject to their own personal tragedies.
Burstyn later said it felt like the film was jinxed. “There were some really strange goings-on during the making of the film,” she explained. “We were dealing with some really heavy material, and you don’t fool around with that kind of material without it manifesting in some way. There were many deaths on the film.”
It’s rumoured that there were up to nine deaths connected with the crew members working on The Exorcist, which Burstyn described as a “scary,” and an “incredible amount” for one film. She explained Blair’s grandfather died, a janitor who monitored the set was shot, and an assistant cameraman’s wife had a baby that passed away over the course of filming.
And Burstyn herself suffered a physical injury over the shoot that scared the crew even more. There is one scene, in particular, where she is pushed to the floor by the possessed Regan. The crew used a wire to drag her violently to the floor, which permanently injured her spine.
She told Huffington Post that director William Friedkin was so dedicated to getting the shot right that “other considerations sort of fall by the wayside sometimes”. But she added that he was a “brilliant director,” who she didn’t want to knock, but admitted she did injure her lower back filming the scene and has had to “work with it ever since”.
But the cameras kept rolling, and the screams heard during that moment were entirely real and made the final cut. Just as the old horror maxim goes, films based on a true story are somehow scarier, and knowing Burstyn was in genuine agony makes it an even more difficult watch.
