Word: burstyn
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...dream was born in the claptrap romantic movies of the 1940s. Anachronistic Alice (Ellen Burstyn), who is bright enough in other ways, dimly believes that time has stood implausibly still in Monterey, where she grew up. To her, it is the logical place to resume a career that apparently consisted of a single gig at the local hotel...
...himself to a bleak wife and two ungovernable kids. His California counterpart, played with ironic self-pity by Larry Hagman, blubbers like a brat for a loan from Dad and for the benefit of his reassuring presence (he can split the rent that way). The daughter in Chicago (Ellen Burstyn) has just got out of her fourth marriage. Harry recognizes their pain and frustration but never stops to consider the source...
Twelve-year-old creamy-skinned, apple-cheeked Regan (Linda Blair), daughter of a famous actress divorcee (Ellen Burstyn) living in the heart of Georgetown society, is possessed mind and body by the devil. Her face grows bloated, crossed by pusfilled lesions; her eyes become cat's orbs that crawl back in her head; her skin swells and turns a swamp color; her hair gets sticky and snaky; her voice comes out the croak of a just-cured male mute; convulsions contort her body and it flips like a wounded crocodile's tail; she drools green gook when...
Nevertheless, the movie is vile and brutalizing. Indeed, in many ways it is worse than the book, although it spares us the Gethsemanic agonies of Blatty's metaphors ("the Kurd stood waiting like an ancient debt"). A famous movie star (Ellen Burstyn) and her daughter are on location in the Georgetown section of Washington, D.C., when the daughter is possessed by a raging demon-the Devil himself. To depict the permutations of this evil spirit, Director Friedkin and Writer Blatty go in for cheap shocks and crude novelty. There are gruesome details of an encephalogram being taken...
...Broadway play That Championship Season) makes a very impressive first film appearance with a performance full of swift undercurrents of psychic pain. Lin da Blair performs bravely as the tormented girl; the rasping voice of her demon is hauntingly dubbed (without screen credit) by Mercedes McCambridge. Ellen Burstyn, a good actress who is especially adept at portraying a beleaguered strength, is stuck here with an assignment that might once have suited Fay Wray: look hysterical and scream. The role, alas, is the very essence of The Exorcist...