Eraserhead (1977)

Writer/director David Lynch's abstract cult classic, his feature debut film, was mostly composed of sick and twisted nightmarish images. It was an indictment of sex, the production of children, and fear of fatherhood or first-time parenthood.

In the opening dream sequence, a pock-marked "Man in the Planet" (Jack Fisk) was sitting in a building (next to a cracked window) with an open roof manipulating mechanical levers that were controlling the central nervous system (sexual desires?) of timid factory worker Henry Spencer (Jack Nance), a printer - it was revealed in Henry's fear dream (about accidentally getting his female partner pregnant) as he floated in space near a planet (his brain?), that he was having pre-marital sexual intercourse with his girlfriend Mary X (Charlotte Stewart); a giant sperm was ejected from his mouth, flew into space, and fell downwards and entered into (or splashed into) Mary's dark puddle (vagina, egg or womb) -- impregnation or conception.

The most ghastly sequences involved Henry's and girlfriend Mary X's deformed, bleating, sickly and whining mutant baby, born prematurely. Henry was forced to marry Mary when she was found to be pregnant after a momentary and "sick" desire for premarital sex, and she moved in with him, in an industrial wasteland area (with abandoned factories, toxic waste and steam). It appeared that they were uncomfortable with each other and miserable together.

In Henry's small one-room apartment, the hairless and inhuman baby (without limbs or ears) had a bulbous body that was wrapped in bandages. It had a long snout, and eyes on the sides of its elongated lamb-shaped head.

Mutant Baby
Henry Stabbing the Baby's Heart With Scissors

The baby produced unbearable and incessant shrieks and piercing screams. At one point after Mary left in disgust and when Henry was caring for the unloved and sickened baby, it was covered with infected sores and gasping for air.

In another dream sequence, Henry was judged by his father (who wished to murder his abomination of a son) - Henry's head was severed by a phallic-shaped appendage that burst from his neck. Eventually Henry's decapitated head rolled onto the ground where it was found by a child in a puddle of blood (with its brain showing) and taken to a pencil factory, where one of the workers took a part of Henry's brain and turned it into the eraser of a pencil (a symbol of Henry's sublimated wish to "erase" what was happening?). On Henry's neck stump, a new deformed head (the mutant baby) grew in its place.

In the film's most grotesque scene, Henry cut open the bandages (or diapers) of his baby with a pair of scissors, and discovered that without the support the bandages provided, the baby's internal organs were otherwise exposed and began to fall out. With the baby's head quivering, Henry stabbed the baby's innards with the scissors, causing the baby to convulse in pain as blood splattered. Liquid and a whitish foam gushed from inside and covered the baby's body as it died.

The neck of the baby elongated and then the head grew gigantic, became disembodied and teleported to different places. Henry was unable to cope with the fact of his own homicidal murder of his own child and went insane. Suddenly, the baby's head was replaced by the planet (Henry's brain from the opening) that exploded. In the film's most iconic image, the explosion caused Henry's fractured head to be surrounded by the pencil erasure shavings of his own brain - (a possible suicide?).

By film's end in blazing white light, an after-death sequence, a relieved Henry (with his mind literally erased) joined the pure and innocent puffy-cheeked girl in radiator Dream-land in an embrace.

Eraserhead's Conclusion
Henry's Eraserhead
	Henry in "Dreamland" (Heaven) with Lady in the Radiator

Event Horizon (1997, UK)

Director Paul W. S. Anderson's fantasy sci-fi horror film was about an interplanetary deep-space research vessel named "Event Horizon" that was launched in the year 2040 to explore the boundaries of the solar system (including to the red dwarf star Proxima Centauri), but then vanished during its maiden voyage - it was a major space disaster. It had disappeared without a trace beyond the 8th planet, Neptune.

The top-secret mission of the Event Horizon - with an 18-man crew - was on its initial flight, to test a new gravity drive (or experimental engine) able to create an artificial black hole (an opening or rift in the space-time continuum) - it could be used to bridge two points in space-time (like a wormhole), reducing travel and journey time over astronomical distances.

In the year 2047, the research vessel mysteriously reappeared after seven years. It was in a decaying orbit around Neptune. On a secret rescue mission on a vessel named USAC Lewis and Clark was Event Horizon's designer - US Aerospace Command Scientist Dr. William G. "Billy" Weir (Sam Neill) - a widower who was still suffering from the death of his wife two years earlier.

[Note: It was entirely possible that the entire film was a nightmarish dream of Dr. Weir's. He was under tremendous strain due to the disappearance of the Event Horizon, a ship he designed. Just before Dr. Weir awoke in the film's opening in his apartment - on a space station orbiting Earth - he had a frightening dream of a screaming, scar-faced corpse (without eyes) floating before a lighted cross-shaped window inside the Event Horizon. Was he being contacted by supernatural forces? Alternatively, he could have been experiencing a recurring dream of his wife Claire's last moments before committing suicide, seen later.]

During the long flight to the edge of the solar system, the rescue crew members were placed in stasis (cyrogenic sleep in a water tank or grav tube) to counteract the tremendous G-forces of the flight. Dr. Weir second dream or vision was of briefly and prematurely awakening in his stasis tank on the Lewis and Clark, and seeing his naked wife Claire (Holley Chant) sitting at the bridge's helm, with blank eye sockets (a second soul without eyes), who spoke: "I'm waiting!" He screamed himself awake at the sight.

The only audio distress signals sent out seemed like a series of screams and howls, and possibly the Latin phrase "Liberate (save) me!" Was it the ship's last transmission? After reaching the crippled vessel drifting in space and finding no signs of life, they docked with it. They believed that the artificial gravity drive was off-line. A three person group boarded the Event Horizon to explore the two sections of the ship: (1) the engine room with the gravity drive, and (2) the forward bridge (that could function separately as an escape vessel). Inside the vessel, there was some evidence of a massacre - a frozen and mutilated human corpse was seen floating in the bridge area, with its eyes gouged out.

During chief engineer Ensign Justin's (Jack Noseworthy) entry into the gravity drive area, the system suddenly activated and a large, damaging shock wave was generated and caused a breach in the hull of the rescue vessel Lewis and Clark - Justin was rendered catatonic and lifeless. Due to the extensive damage, the rescue crew members had to transfer everything (including themselves) onto the Event Horizon - with only limited oxygen remaining.

On board, the crew began to experience horrific visions of past memories and frightening hallucinations, apparently based upon their own personal fears, secrets, failures and lives:

• medical technician Peters (Kathleen Quinlan) saw bloody lesions on the legs of her son (Barclay Wright), who was being cared for by her ex-husband
• commanding officer Captain S. J. Miller (Laurence Fishburne) had memories of abandoning a subordinate who was screaming to be saved - a young officer named Eddie Corrick (Noah Huntley), credited as Burning Man, who was burned during an onboard fire during a previous mission on the Goliath and left behind
• Justin revived, convulsed, and began to cry out about ""the dark inside me" - before ultimately attempting suicide by ejecting himself into space without a spacesuit, and suffering decompression injuries
• while repairing a short circuit in a greenish-colored, claustrophobic gravity drive duct, Dr. Weir had a second tormenting sight of his deceased wife Claire (with two empty eye sockets), presumably ignored and depressed by him due to his work, and urging him to join her ("Forever!")

Capt. Miller realized how the Event Horizon had become a living entity that had perceived his innermost fears: "I never told anybody. But this ship knew about it! It knows my fears, it knows my secrets! Gets inside your head and it shows you!"

During his third and final sighting, Dr. Weir saw Claire in his home's bathroom before taking a bath and cutting her wrist with a razor blade (as he sat next to her) and then she was viewed from a top-shot with her body floating in her own red blood in the bathtub. He had begged for her not to kill herself: "Not again, please, please." Claire then emerged from the tub and told him as she cradled his head against her stomach to comfort him, before squeezing his head to produce intense pain: "Billy, it's alright...You'll never be alone again. You're with me now. You're with me. I have such wonderful, wonderful things to show you." Stricken by guilt and complete torment, the evil-possessed Dr. Weir ripped out his own eyes, to join Claire in her 'hellish dimension.'

Dr. Weir Ripping Out His Eyes

Dr. Weir With His Own Eyes Ripped Out

With empty eye sockets, Weir explained his nefarious plan to the others about how his ship had gone beyond the stars and returned 'alive' after reaching another evil dimension: "Where we're going, we won't need eyes to see....I created the Event Horizon to reach the stars, but she's gone much, much farther than that. She tore a hole in our universe, a gateway to another dimension. A dimension of pure chaos. Pure evil. When she crossed over, she was just a ship. But when she came back, she was alive!" His objective was to activate the gravity drive, open the gateway to the evil dimension, and steer the Event Horizon there with its new captive crew.

It was surmised that the original warning signal was not "Liberate me," but "Liberate tutame - ex inferis" (in other words: "Save yourself - from Hell"). It was feared and verified that the ship's gravity drive had opened a portal in space to another dimension - possibly "Hell." The playback of the Event Horizon's degraded videolog showed what had happened on the spaceship when the original crew went insane - after activating the gravity drive on the day of their departure. The experimental mission had left them vulnerable by forces outside the known universe, and had allowed a malevolent entity to possess the ship and their bodies.

Event Horizon's Shocking Videolog Playback

The videolog of the original crew showed quick-cut scenes of torture, self-mutilation, cannibalism, and orgiastic sodomy. Two bloodied figures ripped organs out of each other. One man vomited an entire arm from his mouth. The Captain held out his own torn-out eyeballs, one in each hand, as he cried out: "Save yourself from Hell!"

The Evil Dead (1981)

#76

Director Sam Raimi's debut film (a supernatural horror film) was the ultimate "cabin in the woods" story, when five Michigan State University students in their 20s spent a weekend retreat in a rented, remote cabin in the Michigan mountains. The film was both extremely graphic and gruesome, but it also exhibited a sense of humor about the demonic possession of four of the five students.

They inadvertently unleashed (or raised from the dead) dormant, demonic evil spirits from the ominous surrounding forest, after listening to a reel-to-reel tape recording of a forbidden book - the Naturon Demonto (or Book of the Dead). [Note: The film was extremely effective for its super-fast POV shots of the demons approaching.]

Unaware of the after-effects, they played one of the tapes of ancient spells, and unleashed demonic forces, coming supposedly from the woods. Afterwards, one by one, each of them, except Ash Williams (B-movie icon Bruce Campbell), became violently possessed by 'evil dead' forces.

The scariest (and most infamous and gratuitous) scene was the predatory 'tree rape' scene. The infamous and controversial predatory (and gratuitous) scene was accused of being misogynistic, and brutal, and even director Sam Raimi years later agreed that he had gone too far.

In the scene, university student Cheryl (Ellen Sandweiss), Ash's sister, ventured outside to find the source of strange noises, urging her: "Join us." She was attacked in the woods outside the remote log cabin (in Michigan or Tennessee?) by prehensile tree branches and vines that wrapped around her neck and limbs.

As the vines and branches stripped her of her clothes, the unwilling Cheryl attempted to cover her bare breast for dignity's sake as the tree ripped her hand away. The branches caressed her and then forcefully spread her thighs and legs ("It was the woods themselves, they're alive") - one large tree branch suddenly impaled her in her crotch to oppressively penetrate her.

Vines Wrapped Around Cheryl's Necks, Arms and Legs

After she was chased back to the cabin (with quick POV tracking shots), she was soon transformed into a demon zombie with a greyish white face and superhuman strength (known as a Deadite or Shemp). As a result, she levitated or floated above the floor, spoke with a ghastly voice (screaming: "You will die!" and "One by one, we will take you"), and grabbed a pencil from the floor and jabbed it into the ankle of Ash's girlfriend Linda (Betsy Baker).

Scotty (Hal Delrich) hit her in the face with the handle of an axe, and managed to chain her up in the basement cellar where she was confined with a padlocked trap-door opening in the living room.

The fourth to be possessed was Linda (although she could revert back to her human self to fool Ash). Ash struggled to subdue her and first stabbed her and wanted to chainsaw her into pieces, but finally beheaded with a shovel after he attempted to bury her - as she spurted blood from her neck stump onto his face.

Evil Dead 2: Dead by Dawn (1987) (aka Evil Dead II)

This sequel (with more demented comical scenes) was a well-done horror parody with an intense kinetic tone and quick edits, and incredible special effects such as stop-motion animation, reverse motion, and lengthy tracking shots.

At the remote Tennessee (or Michigan?) cabin, there was the startling, hallucinatory Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde-like scene when last-surviving Ash Williams (Bruce Campbell) stood in front of a mirror. His reflection suddenly reached out, grabbed him, and maniacally said:

"We just cut up our girlfriend with a chainsaw. Does that sound fine?"

Schizophrenic Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde Sequence

Then the reflection grabbed him by the throat and began choking him, although he was only choking himself. When his own possessed right hand threatened, it grabbed his face - and he was angered: "You dirty bastards! Give me back my hand."

His hand continued to torment him in the continuing, gruesomely hysterical fight between Ash and his own possessed, tormenting attacking hand - it bashed him over the head with plates, grabbed his hair, smashed his face into the kitchen sink, punched him, and tried to beat him up in a schizophrenic frenzy. It dragged his unconscious body across the floor to try and grab a meat cleaver with which to kill him; Ash pinned his hand to the floor with another knife and laughed spitefully at the evil body part: "That's right. Who's laughing now? Who's laughing now?"

In the gory scene, he sawed off his own demonic, evil hand (before it infected his entire body) with a chainsaw, spattering his face with blood - (notice that the top-most book Ash placed on the bucket when covering up his decapitated hand was A Farewell to Arms); the lobbed-off hand began flopping around and re-attacked, and even flipped him the 'middle finger,' so he blasted it with a shotgun and thought he had killed it for good: "Got ya, didn't I, ya little sucker!" - yet it sprayed him directly in the face with a torrent of blood; many of the objects in the living room then began laughing at him - the mounted deer head, the books in the bookcase, the lamps, etc. and he hysterically joined in.

Ash's Chainsaw Amputation of His Possessed Right Hand

In the denouement, Ash clamped the chainsaw to his severed wrist and twirled a sawed-off shotgun into his backside-holster (and then exclaimed: "Groovy!").

After a series of adventures in the cabin for Ash, in the conclusion, Annie Knowby (Sarah Berry) delivered an incantation ("You did it kid") to rid the earth of the evil deadite demons. However, she was stabbed in the back by Ash's severed hand. Surviving Ash was sucked and propelled into a whirling, spinning portal, along with his '88 Oldsmobile, into a time-travel journey to the Middle-Ages, ca 1300s. There, he was surrounded by knights in armor (Crusaders) on horseback, who believed that he was a fearsome deadite. However, when everyone was threatened by a real flying deadite, Ash removed his shotgun from a holster with his left hand, and blasted the creature's head to smithereens.

He was worshipped as a liberating hero by all of the knights:

Hail, he who has come from the sky to deliver us from the terrors of the deadites. Hail! Hail!..

Horrified, Ash repeatedly screamed: "Nooo!" as the camera pulled back, and the screen turned to black for the closing credits.

The Execution of Mary Queen of Scots (1895) (aka The Execution of Mary Stuart)

In a film only 18 seconds in length, the controversial execution (decapitation) of Mary, Queen of Scots (Robert Thomae) on the execution block was cleverly enacted, with one of the earliest uses of selective editing to produce a special effect.

A dummy (or mannequin) with a trick camera shot (substitution shot) were utilized to produce the realistic effect. The scene was shocking and scary for unsophisticated cinematic audiences.

In the short sequence, a blindfolded Mary was led forward from the right (seen from the side). She knelt down and put her head on the block as the executioner raised a large axe. [The substitution of a dummy was made here.] When the axe was brought down, her head rolled off the chopping block to the left and her body slumped to the ground on the right. The executioner picked up the decapitated head in the final frame and held it up.

The Exorcism of Emily Rose (2005)

#15

Director Scott Derrickson's horror film (and courtroom drama) loosely documented the true story of a tragic exorcism. In real-life, German-Catholic Anneliese Michel was allegedly possessed and began to have exorcisms in September of 1975, lasting until mid-1976 when she passed away.

A Catholic priest was charged with negligent homicide during the exorcism of a 19 year-old Catholic college girl named Emily Rose (Jennifer Carpenter). He was on trial, defended by Erin Bruner (Laura Linney). The courtroom trial regarding the failed exorcism and the backstory of Emily were told in flashback (but moved up to the present day in the rural US), showing how she was immediately possessed as a college student alone in her room late one night at 3 am ("the devil's hour") during a thunderstorm. She displayed double-jointed and contortionist positions and grotesque convulsions as she moaned and screamed - she probably suffered from both psychosis and epilepsy.

In the frightening scenes of Emily's rapidly-evolving, self-destructive, demonic spiritual possession, she spoke in tongues and destroyed religious symbols. She ate bugs, starved herself, practiced physical self-abuse (tore her hair out), and saw people's faces transformed into demonic faces. In one memorable scene in a dining hall, all she could hear was the exaggerated sounds of knives and forks clinking on plates.

She lashed out at the parish priest Father Richard Moore (Tom Wilkinson), who wanted to rid her of the "dark, powerful forces." The audio-taped exorcism was played during the court case - it was performed on a wet and wild Halloween night, mostly in a barn, buffeted by winds and her violent screams.

She ultimately revealed that there were six demons inhabiting her. When Father Moore commanded her to tell him her name ("Give me your name, demon!"), she chanted: "One, Two, Three, Four, Five, SIX!!" over and over. Moore persisted, and demanded that the demons reveal their names: "Ancient serpents, depart from this servant of God! Tell me your SIX names!"

They revealed themselves, through her, in six different languages - demons that possessed others in history:

We are the ones who dwell within. (spoken in English)
I am the one who dwelt within CAIN. (Hebrew) = Beelzebub
I am the one who dwelt within NERO. (Latin) = Adramelech
I once dwelt within JUDAS. (Ancient Greek) = Leviathan
And I was with LEGION. (German) = Baal
I am BELIAL. (Aramaic) = Belial
And I am LUCIFER, the Devil in the flesh. (English) = Lucifer

With her death, the court prosecutor Ethan Thomas (Campbell Scott), a devout Christian, claimed that Moore ignored Emily's epilepsy and schizophrenia, and instead concentrated on superstition, letting her become emaciated from dehydration and starvation. Although the priest was found guilty, he did not serve jail time. The epitaph on Emily's gravesite tombstone was from the Bible (Philippians 2:12): "Work out your own Salvation, with fear and trembling" - words that Emily had spoken the night before she died.

The Exorcist (1973)

#3

Director William Friedkin's sensational, shocking horror story about devil possession and the subsequent exorcism of the demonic spirits from a young, innocent girl (of a divorced family) was one of the biggest hits of all-time.

There were many scary scenes in the tale of possessed twelve year-old Regan MacNeil (Linda Blair), whose monstrous appearance was caused by a vicious demon inside of her:

• in an early part of the film, one of the more objectionable and blasphemous scenes was the sight on the Georgetown University campus of a white marble statue of the Virgin Mary, discovered by one of the Jesuit priests in the chapel; it had been desecrated with red paint and other materials, and taken on the appearance of a harlot. The defiled statue had long, conical red-tipped breasts, red color on both hands, and an elongated, erect yet sagging penis-shaped clay protuberance also daubed in red
• during a terrifying visit to a hospital, Regan was subjected to a controversial, loud and lengthy excruciatingly-torturous, "deflowering" medical examination sequence (and blood-letting) known as an arteriogram (or angiogram) - with markedly sexual overtones; to Dr. Tanney's (Robert Symonds) surprise after viewing a series of skull X-rays, he declared: "There's just nothing there. No vascular displacement at all"
• once Regan was returned home, her hysterical, despairing screams were heard and "things have gotten worse...they've gotten violent"; doctors were summoned to her room, where they witnessed Regan's upper torso violently being whipped and thrown back and forth on the bed, as she cried out: "Mother make it stop!"; her uncontrollable seizures were accompanied by low gutteral growls, almost animalistic, and her throat below her chin bubbled out; she back-handedly slapped Dr. Klein across the face and knocked him onto the floor, as her physically-repulsive voice warned: "Keep away! The sow is mine!"; from the camera's POV behind her, she pulled up the front of her nightgown, pantomimed rubbing herself, and in a deep, strange voice, beckoned: "F--k me! F--k me!"; to calm her down, she was given a strong sedative injection by Dr. Klein

Rolled-Back Eyes	Bubbled Up Throat
"Keep away! The sow is mine!"	Pulling Up Nightgown

• Chris heard disturbing crashing sounds from her daughter's room; as she entered, objects were being hurled at the bedroom's closed window; she watched as her daughter performed sacrilegious self-abuse under her blood-splattered nightgown, symbolically simulating the loss of virginity for the young teenager as she stabbed her crotch with a bloody crucifix; the camera registered the horror on the face of Regan's mother Chris, as Regan c bellowed obscenities in the Devil's voice: "Let Jesus f--k you, let Jesus f--k you! Let him f--k you!"; there was a violent struggle to get the cross out of Regan's super-strong arm and her mother tussled with her for control of the offending object; Regan held her mother's head down into her crotch and repeated: "Lick me!" - covering her mother's face in blood

The Notorious Crucifix-Stabbing Scene

• Chris heard disturbing crashing sounds from her daughter's room; as she entered, objects were being hurled at the bedroom's closed window; she watched as her daughter performed sacrilegious self-abuse under her blood-splattered nightgown, symbolically simulating the loss of virginity for the young teenager as she stabbed her crotch with a bloody crucifix; the camera registered the horror on the face of Regan's mother Chris, as Regan c bellowed obscenities in the Devil's voice: "Let Jesus f--k you, let Jesus f--k you! Let him f--k you!"; there was a violent struggle to get the cross out of Regan's super-strong arm and her mother tussled with her for control of the offending object; Regan held her mother's head down into her crotch and repeated: "Lick me!" - covering her mother's face in blood
• Regan then punched her mother with a violent left-handed blow, sending her backwards across the bedroom floor, and then barred the door by telekinetically moving a chair against it, and then menacingly moved a heavy wooden bureau toward her mother sprawled on the floor; as a bloody-faced Regan sat on her bed, she spun her head backwards 180 degrees, threatening in a deep malevolent voice
• Father Karras was brought to Regan's bedroom where awful sounds still emanated from her bedroom as they climbed the stairs; when Karras entered, the girl was strapped to a padded four-poster bed. Her face was cut, her hair matted, her eyes wild-looking, and she had a plastic tube taped to one nostril. The grotesque girl spoke with a disgusting, low-pitched growl coming straight from hell "I'm the Devil!"; she claimed where Regan was: "In here, with us" and then taunted him: "Your mother's in here with us Karras, would you like to leave a message? I'll see that she gets it"
• as he approached closer, in the grossest scene of the film, Regan lurched forward on the bed and spewed bilious, pea-green soup vomit from her mouth in a single projectile stream directly into his face; the thick green slime stuck to his face and clothing; bits of vomit and bile acid also dribbled down onto Regan's nightgown

Father Karras' First View of Regan - Followed by Vomit-Spewing

• in many scenes, her demonic tortured voice screamed foul obscenities and diabolical sounds emanated from her mouth - growling dogs, squealing pigs, rasping groans, and foul language. The raised welts that bubbled up across her abdomen read: "help me."
• in the dramatic finale, the two priests (Father Karras and Father Merrin) entered Regan's ice-cold bedroom, prepared to do spiritual battle at her bedside, to risk their lives (especially Merrin with his heart condition) and administer rites of exorcism with incantations and holy water; garbed in priestly outfits, they also brought weapons of the spirit for exorcism - holy water, holy texts, and a crucifix; the devil's voice emanated from the demonic, staring, fixed-eyes visage of Regan. It cursed at Father Merrin as he recited holy scripture, with the foulest epithet in the film: "Stick your c--k up her ass, you mother-f--king worthless c--ks--ker." Merrin splashed her body with holy water and yelled back: "Be silent!"

Foul String of Obscenities Directed Toward Merrin

Rite of Exorcism Attempt

Puking in Merrin's Face and Attempting to Intimidate Him

Regan screamed and squirmed away, twisting in pain as if burned by the sanctified water. Regan puked in Father Merrin's face as he read the Rite of Exorcism, and shouted insults at Father Karras, followed by more threatening gestures as the demon was cast out, including a darting purple tongue, the levitation and rocking of the bed, the opening and closing of cabinet doors, the cracking walls and ceiling, and Regan's 360-degree spinning head as she sat up; she accused Karras of murder ("You killed your mother. You left her alone to die") before her milky-white eyes rolled demonically backwards, and she levitated off the bed.

Father Damien Karras met his demise when he dared the devil to enter his body: ("Take me. Come into me. God damn you. Take me. Take me") - and he threw himself through Regan's bedroom window to his death in the street below; he gave his own life to save Regan's spirit and life, with the promise of being reborn.

Father Karras Wrestling with the Demon Inside Regan
	"Take me. Come into me. God damn you. Take me. Take me"

In the supplemental The Exorcist: The Version You've Never Seen (2000), with extended footage and added CGI effects, there was Regan's frightening upside-down spider-walk down the stairs. Her body was perversely contorted, as it spit up blood, and Regan's mother Chris reacted in horror at the bottom of the stairs.

The Exorcist III (1990) (aka Exorcist III: Legion)

In this second sequel's most effective 'gotcha' scene - the nurse station sequence, a nurse (Tracy Thorne) with a bright red sweater over her white uniform was making her quiet rounds in a psychiatric ward-asylum.

Suddenly, she was attacked from behind by a white-cloaked individual with large shears who proceeded to cut her head off. Her decapitation was juxtaposed with a pulling-back image of a headless statue.

In another scene, an agile, old lady nursing home resident crawled spider-like on the ceiling over an unaware Detective Kinderman (George C. Scott), as he walked around the day-room.

The Unnoticed Old Woman Skittering Across The Ceiling of Asylum