Tonight we viewed my copy of the Exorcist. This reel is the 3 x 400ft version plus the opening from the 400ft version.
A well known film on the 8mm gauge and although the 400ft version was well edited, this longer edit is obviously a big improvement. The longer edit also includes the relationship between Damien Karras and his Mother.
Fortunately, my print is holding the colours well though there is a little fade in there. I last viewed it in 2017 and put the images on here in the 8mm review section. As you can see here, the colour has changed very little so i was pleased with this viewing tonight.

I must admit Tom not one I could watch over and over I remember seeing this down at Studio 7 in its day,and never sat through it again.
Horror is not my thing but none the less an interesting print to have and not one I see around often.
Colour is holding up reasonably well,certainly a film worth having.
Does it exist as a full feature on 8 ?
Remember Studio 7 ?🤪

Hi Gwyn, Thank you, i cant recall studio 7! The only ones i remember apart from the three main ones in Plymouth were the Belgrave, one of my favourites, and the Plaza.
Where was Studio 7?
As far as i know this movie doesn't exist on 8mm as a full feature unless there are any dodgy prints from Europe like many other titles, or perhaps an optical print, but i've never seen any myself.

Tom,the Plaza was also known as Studio7 back in the day down at Bretonside,building still there but a restaurant/snooker club.
I must admit I have never seen a full length 8mm print but I bet someone got one somewhere.

I didnt realise that the plaza was studio 7. It was called many things in its later years, the flea pit and porn pit. But before it showed crap i recall a school trip to that cinema where we watched a film about the moon landings and later my Mum took me there to a showing of Where eagles dare.

Had a Big crush on Linda Blair, seeing these pictures make me wonder why ;-)

Showas sooo sweet in Hell Night though, that is better than the pea soup picture :-)

When w were viewing this I was wondering why i havnt seen in her in anything substantial after this film.
Reading about her on wiki, she has been in a decent number of films but i cant say i've heard of more than 5/10% of the titles, but i guess after this and it's sequel she was type cast in cheap horror films.
I do recall the spoof film, Repossessed with Lesly Nielson which was a send up of the exorcist, aside Nielson, it wasn't particularly funny, certainly nothing like airplane, but one short scene that did make me laugh, (and i do have a juvenile sense of humour), was when the exorcism was being performed and i heard "lick me" and wondered how they were going to turn that around, the first time i saw it i did laugh but perhaps now not so funny.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z6jU99is...basaKazanari_83

BTW Vidar, nice to see you back again.

Tom ,yes Plaza /Studio 7 went through many incarnations over time ,showing some decent films on second runs if memory serves but will most probably be remembered for the soft porn films.Fun times.
Back to the Exorcist.This year marks the fiftieth anniversary of Tubular Bells Mike Oldfiields great debut studio album.Lalo Shifirin had written the original score for the film which director Friedkin scrapped and was replaced with music from Tubular Bells,since then the film and the music have been closely associated and both were hits.Tubular Bells was also the album that launched Branson’s Virgin Records.

Tom, you should see Savage Streets if you haven’t, there is an uncut version on DVD. Chained Heat was great too, Summer of Fear a Wes Craven TV film ws quite good too and Hell Night is a great horror film. I would love to find Chained Heat and Savage Streets on 16mm. I got Hell Night and Summer of Fear

Thanks Vidar, i will check these out.

Gwyn, i wonder what the Lalo Shiffrin music would have been like. You can normally hear his type of music and guess it before his name comes up, with that in mind i think Friedkin.
One thing i did see on a documentary about the director was that he use to fire off a gun while the cameras were rolling.
In order to get the results he wanted from his actors he would use uncongenial methods,

If you have 8 minutes to spare, take a look at this section from the documentary, they dont make Directors like this any more.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Cs2wYkX...channel=AlcoveC

Another fun one to edit the 400ft reel into.
Only story I can add is the local little 3 screen cinema knew I was into film collecting in the 90s and they were struggling somewhat. I asked them to do a triple bill of the films and put posters up in the local colleges. It was a packed out cinema on the day and so much fun.
Unit 3 eventually went under due to imposed re development.
Exorcist was the second one I got to see as I was late back from the BBC so watched II at our Odeon when they had a double bill on with one and II.
When Excorcist came on and started building women were running out the cinema screaming!
Good Times.. Nice to see the 8mm pics

I also recall upon its release that real priests were jumping through windows and killing themselves. I would say the power of film but i think they were all just nuts

I originally had the 400ft edition which was very well edited, there were a few extra scenes to the actual exorcist in the 400ft version but i think editing these small bits into that scene would have ruined it due to the difference in look and sound, As this longer edits stands, the opening scene (not included on the 3 x 40ft) does make this edit much better.

Many years ago a small lab owner said he made a negative of the full feature of Exorcist but since he was in a rush to get it done it turned out badly. I don't know if he made any prints but he did it would probably be only 2 prints since that was the kind of super 8mm printer he had. It looked like some homemade device.

Hello Larry, what other titles did he manage to do?
Be good to know if those Exorcist features are still around.

I was over at his place to record the track on my E.T. feature at the time. So this must have been around 1982. Since his employee knew what he was working on he told his boss. I forgot his name. I believe it was Maritz lab. It's been many years so my memory is pretty fuzzy. So me and the boss had a talk and he only mentioned he had done the Exorcist. If he mentioned other titles I don't remember.

Another movie I have never seen at all. I was too young to see it when it was first released in the cinema, and I don't think this was ever shown on non-cable TV in the next following years. I do enjoy the Universal classic horror films and Hammer ones but was never into horror from the 70s and later.

In terms of color fade, my non-technical theory is that most of the fade occurs in the first 10 years or so and then gradually decreases to almost nothing. So I believe your print will probably stay looking like that for many years to come.

I once had someone tell me that their VHS tape's color had faded! That's impossible, though of course the picture can deteriorate, but there are no dyes to fade!

This movie had me thinking. One of my favorite TV shows is the original THE ODD COUPLE with Tony Randall and Jack Klugman. One episode, first aired on Dec 7, 1973, is "The Exorcists", which was supposed to be inspired by the movie, which wasn't released until December 26, 1973. Even though they probably heard that it was coming out, the producers of the TV show would have no way of knowing what a hit the movie would become. I'm now scratching my head...