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List Price: $12.98 | | Label: Warner Home Video
Salesrank: 13279
Released: December 1, 1998 |
| Our Price: $30.00 |
| Used Price: $6.28 |
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MPAA Rating: R (Restricted)
Media: DVD |
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Editorial Review:
An innocent girl is evilly possessed -- and a doubting priest becomes her last hope. Linda Blair and Ellen Burstyn in the two-time Academy Award(R) winner that shocked the world.
DVD Features:
Audio Commentary:Separate Commentaries by Friedkin & Blatty
Other:"Fear of God" 3 trailers Nwe Interviews
TV Spot:6 TV Spots: "Beyond Comprehension", "You Too Can See The Exorcist", "Between Science and Superstition", "The Movie You've Been Waiting For", "Nobody Expected It", "Life Had Been Good"
Description of The Exorcist (25th Anniversary Special Edition):
Director William Friedkin was a hot ticket in Hollywood after the success of The French Connection, and he turned heads (in more ways than one) when he decided to make The Exorcist as his follow-up film. Adapted by William Peter Blatty from his controversial bestseller, this shocking 1973 thriller set an intense and often-copied milestone for screen terror with its unflinching depiction of a young girl (Linda Blair) who is possessed by an evil spirit. Jason Miller and Max von Sydow are perfectly cast as the priests who risk their sanity and their lives to administer the rites of demonic exorcism. Ellen Burstyn plays Blair's mother, who can only stand by in horror as her daughter's body is wracked by Satanic disfiguration. One of the most frightening films ever made, The Exorcist was mysteriously plagued by trouble during production, and the years since have not diminished its capacity to disturb even the most stoic viewers. The film is presented in letterbox format on digital video disc, with a remastered soundtrack that's guaranteed to curdle your blood. The 25th-anniversary Special Edition DVD of The Exorcist is packed with bonus features, including a 74-minute documentary titled The Fear of God: The Making of The Exorcist, which includes interviews with cast and crew, audio commentary by William Friedkin and author William Peter Blatty, a special introduction by Friedkin, theatrical trailers and TV spots, and DVD-exclusive coverage of the film's storyboards and production design. --Jeff Shannon
The Exorcist (25th Anniversary Special Edition) Reviews:
THE EXORCIST " THE VERSION NEVER SEEN BEFORE" 
2008-08-10 - VIDEO CASSETEE, " THE EXORCIST" THE VERSION NEVER SEEN BEFORE"
VERY REALISTIC, FIRST MOVIE OF IT'S TIME, MOST DISTURBING, AND VERY GRAPHIC LANGUAGE. NO OTHER HORROR MOVIE COMPARES, THAT IS, IF YOU COULD KEEP FROM TURNING AWAY!
IT WILL KEEP YOU UP AT NIGHT WONDERING COULD THIS EVER HAPPEN TO ME?
Classic fear
2008-08-06 - Want some fear? This is the movie for you. The music will haunt you for the rest of your life.
One of the best horror fims of all time.
2008-06-18 - Like many of you out there I grew up in a large Catholic family.
And I, like many of you had older siblings who were only too happy to show me this when I was nine or ten years old.
LOL.
I still have nightmares. I'm kidding, but at the age of ten, it left an impression.
The movie itself?
Brilliant, shocking, it's withstood the test of time and deserves its place in Hollyweird history.
The shocking element is also its biggest downfall.
Between the spinning head and the projectile pea soup, it's just way too unrealistic.
I also reviewed The Exorcism of Emily Rose.
My opinion, Emily is better, it's a thinking persons Exorcist.
It's a fresh take on a subject that will please fans of the original Exorcist and our jaded, desensitized younger crowd.
The Exorcist will always have a place in Hollyweird history, even when Emily has been long forgotten.
A must see, maybe not a must own since the subject matter is kind of iffy with a lot of folks.
Use more discretion than my older siblings had at the time.
Not for kids, period.
Thrills
2008-06-18 - All time great thriller. I can watch over and over and still get goosebumps. One thing, did not like the actress who played the mother, they could have got someone better. Max Von Sydow a favorite of mine. See him in "The Night Visitor". The locations in Exorcist are great. Maybe silly but would like to visit the house. This movie a milestone for others to try and copy aspects of it. Never will go out of date.
Longer, but not better 
2008-04-21 - The Exorcist - The Version You've Never Seen is also the version you probably shouldn't have, adding almost nothing to a fine original but running time, some clumsy additional `subliminal' images digitally grafted on with all the subtlety of a 1980s New Romantic music video and a poor new sound mix that adds music cues and sound effects far less effective than the original mix. Most of the restored footage is taken up by an extended additional medical tests sequence that feels a little out of place since Regan hasn't been acting particularly oddly at that point in the film, as well as the odd bit of padding in the run-up to the exorcism and a redundant scene of Karras listening to a tape recording of a pre-possession Regan. Worst of the new additions by far is the infamous spider walk, a scene abandoned during shooting and here accounting for two rather laughable shots that take the film too far too soon. Other additions are somewhat more esoteric - a brief pretitle shot of the Georgetown house and street, Father Dyer keeping the St Christopher at the end after Chris hands it back and the disastrous addition of a screeching airplane sound effect in the segue from Iraq to Georgetown that makes you think Pazuzu must have travelled to Washington by Pan-Am (although this does echo Lalo Schifrin's far more effective rejected scoring for the sequence).
What's most curious is what's still missing: despite including the weak Hollywood ending with Kinderman and Father Dyer, the exchange with Chris over whether she still doesn't believe in God is gone. The big bone of contention between Blatty and Friedkin, the idea that if you believe in the Devil because of all the terrible things that happen, you must also believe in a God even if he, unlike the horned one, doesn't advertise, seems the only justification for extending the section at all, but as if to spite the writer it's still pointedly removed. Only the brief discussion about the Devil's motives for possessing Regan in a break in the exorcism feels like it adds any substance to the proceedings (although it could be said the possession is more disturbingly arbitrary if left unexplained), the rest being motivated purely by the need for a marketing hook to secure a US reissue.
The end result is a film that feels much longer and slower but still eventually grips. Aside from the overlength, the strengths and weaknesses are much the same: the at times almost documentary style of film-making grounds the events in a recognisable real world, the shock effects are fairly sparingly used and only after a long build-up, the characters well-drawn and their despair convincing: the real horror in the film doesn't reside in its special effects or horrific set pieces, but in a mother's anguish over being powerless to help her child.
Few extras, but the widescreen transfer is good.
