The Exorcist is one of the most iconic films ever made and the creepy 1973 flick is shrouded in mystery and real-life horror stories, including a strange building fire and a priest’s blessing
The Exorcist’s story is terrifying, but what happened during filming will disturb you to the core.
The 1973 horror film tells the story of young Regan MacNeil and the attempts to exorcise a demon from her body. However, away from the cameras you could be forgiven for thinking the film was completely cursed.
In the 1998 documentary The Fear of God: 25 Years After The Exorcist, Father Thomas Bermingham recalled: “[Director William] Friedkin called me and said: ‘Can you come down and exorcise the set?”
“I said: ‘No Billy, no. I don’t want to increase anxiety or anything like that.” Instead, Thomas gave The Exorcist’s team a blessing.
While the cast were filming the famous exorcism scene, a fire started at the 20th Century Fox studio on West 54th Street. In the early hours of the morning, the MacNeil house was engulfed in flames and Friedkin recalled the horrifying incident.
““The production manager called me at 4 a.m. and said, ‘Don’t bother to come to work today. I said, ‘Why? Am I fired?’ ‘No, but the set has just burned to the ground.”
Luckily much of the set was built separate from the bedroom where the exorcism scene took place. Apparently the fire was caused by a pigeon that sadly flew into a light box and the set was rebuilt from scratch, with filming resuming six weeks later.
The exorcism scene also caused problems for Ellen Burstyn, the actress who played Regan’s mother Chris MacNeil: “[Friedkin] was always great with me, except when he permanently injured my spine.”
She was attached to a wire by her waist, which pulled her back toward a wall as Regan hit her in the face during the crucifix scene. Burstyn was 40 at the time and was forced to film the sequence multiple times, which put some serious strain on the actress.
Ellen asked Friedkin to “lighten up” but on the scene’s fourth take, she landed so hard on her coccyx that she was left in unbearable pain. However, the director took the opportunity to film her genuine reaction which left Ellen fuming.
“I was furious when he did that, exploiting the pain I was feeling. Since then, I’ve always had trouble with my back.”
Some spooky goings-on also happened while filming the 1973 horror. According to Burstyn, “there were nine deaths” which she branded “an enormous amount of deaths connected with a film”.
“Some very directly, like the actor Jack MacGowran, who gets killed in the film, completed shooting and died. The assistant cameraman whose wife had a baby during the shoot — the baby died. The man who refrigerated the set died. The young black night watchman [died].”
Vasiliki Maliaros also died during the film’s production in February 1973. She was 89-years-old.
The Exorcist’s publicist Joe Hyams was clearly disturbed by the deaths and said: “These weren’t casualties from stunts or things like that. These were men standing behind the camera and all of a sudden dropping dead.”
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Source: Celebrities - dailystar.co.uk
