Oh, and DR Sarah...
The Exorcist still freaks me out, and I can honestly say I've never sat through the whole movie. And I'm kind of afraid to do so even at the ripe old age of 35. I was most defnitely not old enough to get into a theatre to see it when it originally came out, but I remember the "adults" talking about it in hushed tones around the dinner table. Coming from a devout Catholic family, the movie was a cause for "concern". And my Catholic upbringing has/had always made me sensitive to "things" dealing with Satan, the Devil, etc. "Horror movies" - at least the guts and gore types never truly scared me - grossed me out, yes, scared, no. However, movies dealing with possession or hauntings did and still do some times. *I remember not wanting to close my bedroom windows after seeing Amityville Horror for fear that I would see two red eyes looking back at me... And then there was that night I woke up and looked at my clock radio and it was 3:15.. !!!! Oh, and The Omen series - at least the first one - was also particularly freaky.
And to make matters "worse"... I went to a Catholic grade school, and one day in seventh grade, one of my classmates asked our teacher, a nun, if the "Exorcist" was a real thing. -I think this was around the time that it was being shown on network television for the first and/or second time, and that's why it came up. Well, we were told the basics of the story. That it was based on a real incident. That it did occur in DC, in Georgetown. How God allows someone to be possessed. That there are priests trained as exorcists... And that it had happened not to a little girl, but to a little boy. Needless to say, that little nugget of info stuck in my mind... I didn't have nightmares or sleepless nights, but it did make me think. I don't recall getting any real specifics, but Sr. Gregory did say that the movie made up a lot of the events. Then some of the "big kids" started talking about the steps in Georgetown... And how the blood is supposedly still on the sidewalk... How they had all these problems on the set of the picture... The original set burned down... etc., etc., etc... *Wow, I even remember being "scared" of the copy of the book that my aunt had - the cover image was very spooky (to an 11-year old boy).
In other words, The Exorcist is a scary movie.
In happier news.. I think I'm no longer a Newbie!