William Peter Blatty’s,
The Exorcist scared the hell out of
Americans. The images of young Regan
portrayed by Linda Blair shocked and disturbed filmgoers. Lines at the box
office often went for blocks. This movie would usher in a monster that most of
society is familiar with: The Devil, Satan, Lucifer...the Fallen Angel.
For much of the
Seventies, possession, cults, and the antichrist would make a claim on the soul
of horror. This would also signal a
profound shift in the genre from the rubber and latex creations that had been
frightening audiences for the past few decades.
Many fans of
horror were growing disenchanted. At age
eleven, I was amongst that number. While
Regan had indeed terrified me, I didn’t think of the Devil as a proper monster. Besides, it was difficult to be frightened of
an entity that not only did my church tell me every Sunday was powerless as
long as I believed in God; but was portrayed by Flip Wilson as merely having
the ability to make Geraldine wear unflattering dresses.
It wasn’t Satan
who proved to be scary. Instead, it was
his assortment of servants and minions who would begin to affect a change in
the horror genre and endanger “the monster” as a movie staple.
Race with the Devil would perpetuate the
idea that you needn’t worry about Dracula, Frankenstein’s Monster, or
Bigfoot. The monster proved to be Middle
America, where, apparently everybody worships Satan while performing nightly
moonlight sacrifices of nubile young virgins.
To put an exclamation on their monster worthiness, the Satanists nail
Loretta Switt’s little dog to the door of the RV. The seal was officially broken. The monster under the bed was no longer as
scary as my next-door neighbor.
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