Category: Film Studies
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Blackwater Valley Exorcism: Equating Demonic Possession with Sexual Assault
When The Exorcist (1973) was first released, it spawned numerous foreign rip-offs and B-movie exploitative versions. From Şeytan (1974) in Turkey to the reworking of the Italian film ‘Lisa e il diavolo’ (1974/1975)into The House of Exorcism, foreign producers created their own takes on the story of young women being possessed, with more or less…
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30th Anniversary of Ghostbusters
This blog post was inspired by a request to comment on the 30th anniversary for an article on the momentous event. You can find the entire article that utilized my quotes here. What is reflected below is an expansion of those thoughts. I was a young girl when the movie came out — only 6…
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The Devil Inside: The One that Pissed Off People
A good found footage movie relies on its ability to trick you into thinking, just for a second, that maybe this could have been happening. We all know it didn’t — the fact that we are seeing a “movie” is the largest proof against that idea — but we still like to trick ourselves in…
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A Judaic Take on Exorcism in The Possession
One of the first movies we could qualify as being exorcism cinema was not concerned with the Catholic approach to possession and exorcism. Instead, it showed us this conflict from an older religious perspective, Judaism. In 1937, a Polish movie called Der Dibuk or The Dybbuk was released as one of the first movies filmed…
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Considering Adaptation Theories in the Globalized 21st Century
Christopher Olson considers just how much adaption theories, and the need for fidelity, matter when you are adapting material from one culture to another in Considering Adaptation Theories in the Globalized 21st Century. via Considering Adaptation Theories in the Globalized 21st Century.
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The Last Exorcism Part II: Not Really Real
In our last post, we discussed the first found footage exorcist cinema, The Last Exorcism. What we have found interesting with this latest series of exorcism cinema is this desire to bring to the forefront the idea that such cases of exorcism are real, either through the filming techniques or the demonstration of being inspired by…
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The Last Exorcism But First Found Footage
Before Chris Olson and I started on this project, we were just watching horror movies. I have been fond of found footage style horror movies since The Blair Witch Project. And in my last post on the exorcism cinema project, I started thinking through why these movies are relying on tactics designed to foster a…
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The True Exorcism Stories: The Exorcism of Emily Rose
In this blog, we’ve been talking thus far about the movies that in some way relate to The Exorcist. There were the two sequels – the one with Regan and the one without her – that came from that movie, as well as the two prequels, and then the movie based on the non-fictional telling…
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Possessed: Based on the True Story that Inspired The Exorcist
When William Peter Blatty was looking to write a story, he learned of a family in Maryland who claimed to have been one of the few, if not the only at that time, documented and thus official cases of exorcism in the United States. Blatty contacted the exorcist in charge of the ceremony, researched the…
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Nicolas Winding Refn and the Construction of a Stable Masculinity: Part III
In this third part of his analysis of how the Danish director Nicholas Winding Refn portrays masculinity in his films, Christopher Olson deconstructs the films to understand how Refn creates men that reflect this idealized notion of individualism as an important characteristic of men. Read all about how this applies to Pusher, Bronson, Valhalla Rising, and Drive in Nicolas…
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