It all started with The Exorcist

The title of this post is a tad misleading, of course, because The Exorcist was not the FIRST horror movie I had seen. I had been watching late night horror movies via local horror hosts and (a little later) cable since I was about seven. The Exorcist was the first movie that really scared me. I mean REALLY SCARED ME!! Let's set the story:

I was about 10 years old, and staying the night at a friend's house. Not a great friend, but a better friend because he had HBO and I didn't. I had heard about The Exorcist but was not allowed to watch it. I had read that it would be playing on HBO late that night and convinced my friend that we should watch it, not knowing that it would change my life forever.

I will assume anyone reading this blog has seen the movie so describing it would be pointless. When the movie ended we stayed up all night, in silence, just staring at each other mulling over in our heads what we just saw. I ran home at dawn, and tried to go to bed but could not sleep. I'm sure thirty years has affected my memory, but it felt like I didn't sleep for days. My sister was 13 at the time, close in age to Regan McNeil, and I was convinced that she would become posessed. It was even harder to try and act normal around my parents without telling them what I had watched.

Time passed, and of course I came to realize that demonic posession was not in my sister's future, and I have seen The Exorcist probably 100 times since then. I must confess it still gets me a little bit every time though, and it has maintained a soft spot in my heart. There are probably scarier movies, although not many I bet, and for me, it's the benchmark for movie scariness. When I watch a horror movie now, I always ask myself if it was scarier than The Exorcist, and I usually know the answer.