Film critic and broadcaster Doctor Mark Kermode often emphasises, in the course of his Friday afternoon film-review slot on the Simon Mayo programme on BBC Radio 5 Live, that he considers "The Exorcist" to be one of the best movies ever made.

I can see where he's coming from.

I recently purchased a DVD restoring 11 minutes of original footage. While I could have done without Regan's "Spider-Walk" down the stairs, the restoration of an earlier sequence of medical examinations of Regan seems entirely justified. Much of the power of the narrative derives from the fact that exorcism is only considered when all the medical and psychological possibilities have been exhausted. And some of the most disturbing sequences in the film are the medical procedures and hospital wards.

The DVD commentary by director William Friedkin is informative, too:

1. I hadn't registered, for example, that most of the shots of the troubled Jesuit priest Father Karras show him ascending (stairs etc), prefiguring his ascent (presumably) into heaven at the close of the film.

2. The blasphemous filth Regan comes out with when she's possessed is prefigured by her mother's much milder oaths.

3. The "fight" between mother and daughter over the stolen cookies early in the film prefigures the much more horrendous later confrontation between the two at the height of Regan's possession.

Just a few examples of how tightly and subtly-constructed in this movie.

It's an astonishing movie, no doubt about that. I remember the furore it caused on release and being genuinely scared waiting in the queue to watch it due to all the stories building up around it. I have seen it numerous times and it never loses its power.

Friedkin states in his commentary that his favourite scene is that between Lt. Kinderman (Lee J. Cobb) and Mrs McNeil (Ellen Burstyn) in the latter's kitchen.

Both know that Regan killed Burke Dennings, but neither will say it outright. The fencing between these two great actors is just mesmerising. Burstyn asks Cobb if he wants another cup of coffee- obviously a polite request for him to leave. But he accepts! Great stuff!

"The Exorcist" was made in the days before computer-generated graphics. This means that everything you see on the screen is real.

In order to achieve the effect, for example, of the actors' breath condensing in the intense cold of Regan's bedroom, for example, the set had to be turned into a gigantic refridgerator. But because the set lights necessarily warmed up the atmosphere in the studio, filming could only take place in 15-minute segments before the lights were shut off and the temperature allowed to drop again.

And in order to achieve the effect of the stunt double of Father Karras falling down the stairs at the close, each step had to be individually coated in rubber.

The famous green bile was achieved by means of a pump containing liquid pea soup.

In order to achieve the reaction shots he wanted from the cast, director William Friedkin treated them terribly.

When Father Karras gets a moutful of green bile, the anger of actor Jason Miller is perfectly genuine. As is the terror and outrage of Ellen Burstyn when she's yanked off her feet (by means of a belt around her waist attached to a rope).

In the accompanying DVD commentary, Max von Sydow (playing the exorcist Father Merrin) is amusingly wry about directorial "methods I was not used to". He took to arriving at work each morning and asking the Special Effects man, "Where will the shots from the hidden gun be coming from today?- Ah. Thank you".

I haven't seen The Exorcist for years, I'll have to re-watch sometime.

I advise all to check out Exorcist II. AWESOME MOVIE.

Reports indicated that the film inspired audience laughter at its premiere in New York. Blatty said he was the first person to start laughing at the theatre at which he saw the film, only to be followed by the other patrons (“You’d think we were watching The Producers”). Blatty also claims that the day after he saw the film, he called co-producer Richard Lederer and asked him, “take the film out of release. Give it to me and, without touching a frame of the film, I will create an entirely new plot, new dialogue. It’ll all be in subtitles or we’ll dub it and pretend it’s a foreign film, but it will be a comedy. And I was dead serious.”

Sorry, I should have been more clear... I was talking about Exorcist II!

My father remembers seeing Exorcist I at the cinema and he said people were constantly walking out as they thought they were going to be sick! He re-watched it not too long ago, I think he was a bit dissapointed. But I guess no movie can live up to how scary he remembered it was in his mind!

And the source was from wiki. It's certainly true though as I have read similar accounts before. I can't remember what Exorcist III is like. Linda Blair isn't in it, I remember that much. Oddly, she has a really tiny cameo in the 1995 movie 'Scream'.

Ah. Right. Exorcist II. That explains the disrepency, then.

BTW- Shame we don't have an emoticon here vomiting green bile. This little chap is the closest we get:

It did a lot later when I was in missionary school at the sweet and tender age of 17......we had just done Macbeth in class......and I went to teh kitchen to get a knife in teh middle of the night......

Ah. right.

Pea-soup on the missionary school menu, was it?