Ms. Clelia
Her crawling on the ceiling gave me chills. I caught this movie late one night and found it terrifying. It was also nice to see a younger Scott Wilson who played Hershel on the Walking Dead!
shareAgreed - some viewers think it's an embarrassing or hokey effect, but it made me jump out of my skin when I saw it the first time. Maybe Blatty was trying to insert a functional equivalent of the spider walk that was not in the first releases of The Exorcist...
shareThat's a really good point. That spider walk also really stuck with me... its so odd and frightening. This whole movie was odd and uncomfortable to me, but in a good way. I felt like there was something creepy in the harmless characters like the nurse, Ms. Celia, and Mrs. Kinderman (her voice). I am waiting until Halloween to rewatch the original!
shareYeah, some people get creeped out by Zora Lampert's voice, as if it is not really hers, or that it's been modified in post-production. Agreed that the film contains odd and uncomfortable elements that attempt to keep the viewer disoriented. Of all the oddballs, Dr. Temple with his "paper drive" is probably my favorite...
shareYes! I liked that as well... its like the different characters were all oddly neurotic. The Nurse actress, her line delivery was so off it added a lot to this movie. I am really interested in reading the book.
shareYeah, Nurse Allerton's reactions are all over the board - first she's curt and unhelpful to Kinderman; then she bandages his hand, even though she knows that he's injured it by striking one of her patients - in this scene she has the introspection to refer to herself as "a bitch"; but then later on, she's back to her witchy demeanor when she attacks Kinderman for being in "Little Jack Horner's" hospital room. But she has the crucial function of providing Kinderman with evidence that Karras himself/his soul is occupying Patient X's body when she tells the cop, " 'Save your servant'... Oh, it's just something our patient in Cell 11 says sometimes ... He sounds different... I don't know, decent... He said, 'Kill it!' "...
:)