The Exorcist
The Exorcist is a 1973 film from the USA, directed by William Friedkin, running 122 minutes. reelscum files it under occult & satanic panic.
- Year
- 1973 · 1970s films
- Country
- USA
- Runtime
- 122 min
- Director
- William Friedkin
- Updated
- 10 Aug 2026
- Obscurity
- canon (0/100)
- Also known as
- The Exorcist (Director's Cut) · L'exorciste: Montage prolongé du réalisateur · The Exorcist: The Version You Haven't Seen Yet · The Exorcist: The Version You've Never Seen · William Peter Blatty's The Exorcist
- Banned in
- UK · Ireland
Defined in the glossary: Occult & satanic panic
Pulled from UK video shelves from 1988 to 1999, and effectively unavailable to buy in Ireland until 1998.
Plays it entirely straight and takes the theology seriously. Still works.
William Friedkin plays it completely straight and takes the theology seriously, which is why it still works when the imitators do not. A child is possessed, two priests are called, and the film spends its length making you believe in something you do not believe in.
It became the highest-grossing R-rated horror film for good reason: the craft is impeccable, the escalation is patient, and the practical effects still land. It caused genuine public panic and a decade of rip-offs.
Not exploitation, and the standard the whole occult cycle failed to reach.
Trailer
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Where to watch
Legal options in USA
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Written about
- The Exorcist was banned on video in Britain by one censor
The Exorcist passed uncut for British cinemas in 1974, then had no legal UK video release from 1988 to 1999 because one censor would not certify the tape.
- Banned, cut and confiscated
A Fulci print flown out of the country, an Australian rating that just means no, and a German court that filed The Evil Dead under criminal violence. Three states, three machines for making a film disappear.
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