The real-life murderer who cameos in ‘The Exorcist’
When it comes to picking the cast for a movie, the lead stars are carefully selected based on wide and detailed criteria that relate to their box office potential as well as their genuine dramatic ability, with the likes of Brad Pitt, Jennifer Lawrence and Tom Hanks having both. But the same doesn’t go for extras, with such background stars being recruited from willy-nilly without much thought for who they are, with this coming back to bite director William Friedkin and his 1973 horror The Exorcist.
Often called the greatest horror movie of all time, Friedkin’s film, based on William Peter Blatty’s novel of the same name, tells the story of a young girl who becomes possessed by a demon, forcing those around her to question their faith and place in the universe. Among the film’s most notorious moments is one memorable sequence in which the girl goes through a medical procedure to try and find a reason for her mental illness.
Wishing for the scene to be as authentic as possible, Friedkin visited a cerebral angiography at New York’s University Hospital in preparation and witnessed a particularly graphic procedure. Yet, whilst being a little disturbed, the director was also impressed by what he saw from the medical staff, even offering radiographer Paul Bateson a role in the movie in which he would play himself in the aforementioned scene.
The role might be small, but it is prominent, with Bateson even having a few lines of dialogue before he disappears from the scene, never to be seen again. Indeed, his appearance would be entirely forgettable if it weren’t for one shocking realisation years later that would forever change how this scene was interpreted.
In 1977, Bateson was struggling with alcoholism and had recently lost his job at the University Hospital in New York. Spending his time drinking and clubbing, he met Addison Verrill, a reporter for Variety, at a Manhattan bar, an individual who was discovered dead at his apartment shortly after they met. The local police assumed that his death came as the result of an attempted robbery, but Arthur Bell of The Village Voice wasn’t convinced, leading an investigation into Verrill’s death.
While investigating the case, Bell received an anonymous phone call that suggested that Bateson was the man responsible for the murder, leading to his subsequent arrest. He was apprehended shortly before the remains of six men were discovered in the Hudson River, leading many to believe that Bateson was not only responsible for the death of Verrill but several others, too.
Yet, the evidence for Bateson’s involvement in the other six murders was insufficient, so he was sentenced to 20 years for the killing of Verrill, an event that shocked those who had worked with him before. “People were shocked,” Dr. Ajax George, who worked on the same scene in The Exorcist, told Esquire, “There was no inkling in his behaviour that would raise any suspicion. He was very good with patients and he was extremely smart … he was an asset to the department”.
Remarkably, Friedkin reportedly conversed with Bateson in prison shortly after his imprisonment, with their dialogue informing the making of the 1980 movie Cruising, which stars Al Pacino as a cop who goes undercover to catch a killer who is going after gay men in New York City.
In a movie of spinning heads, spewing vomit and demonic possession, the cameo from a real-life murderer remains one of its most eerily captivating moments.
