{"id":368,"date":"2015-05-24T16:40:00","date_gmt":"2015-05-24T20:40:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.library.american.edu\/mediaservices\/2015\/05\/24\/video-of-the-exorcist-hubbub-lets-you-experience-terror-by-proxy\/"},"modified":"2015-05-24T16:40:00","modified_gmt":"2015-05-24T20:40:00","slug":"video-of-the-exorcist-hubbub-lets-you-experience-terror-by-proxy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.library.american.edu\/mediaservices\/2015\/05\/24\/video-of-the-exorcist-hubbub-lets-you-experience-terror-by-proxy\/","title":{"rendered":"Video of The Exorcist hubbub lets you experience terror by proxy"},"content":{"rendered":"<div style=\"clear: both;text-align: center\"><\/div>\n<p>Even beyond its familiar DC setting, <i>The Exorcist<\/i> holds a special place in cinematic memory as one of the most successful and \u2013 just going from anecdotes \u2013 most terrifying horror films ever made. It&#8217;s difficult to envision any pop culture event today holding the nation&#8217;s full attention and enthusiasm, let along a horror movie, but<i> The Exorcist<\/i> came very close on its release in 1973.<\/p>\n<p>We didn&#8217;t believe the anecdotes about the enormous turnout and reaction until we watched the above video, an undated and apparently orphaned 20-minute news featurette about the movie&#8217;s success and impact. Moviegoers lined down the block to see <i>The Exorcist<\/i> multiple times, with many apparently leaving mid-screening and returning again to see if they could stomach it a second time. This is astounding footage that demonstrates the central role movie theaters played in American culture life decades ago. And this fervor predates <i>Jaws<\/i> and <i>Star Wars<\/i>, generally considered the first blockbusters.<\/p>\n<p>Even something as big as <i>Jurassic World<\/i> won&#8217;t bring out the same neighborhood-spanning queues or inspire visceral reactions from the audience, so this video of the hype surrounding <i>The Exorcist<\/i> is the closest most of us will get to seeing a movie release of such sensational scale. (The freakouts over how intensely scary it is are just icing.)\t\t<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Even beyond its familiar DC setting, The Exorcist holds a special place in cinematic memory as one of the most successful and \u2013 just going from anecdotes \u2013 most terrifying horror films ever made. It&#8217;s difficult to envision any pop culture event today holding the nation&#8217;s full attention and enthusiasm, let along a horror movie, [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":18,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[185,377],"class_list":["post-368","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-inevitable-march-of-time","tag-video"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.library.american.edu\/mediaservices\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/368","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.library.american.edu\/mediaservices\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.library.american.edu\/mediaservices\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.library.american.edu\/mediaservices\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/18"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.library.american.edu\/mediaservices\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=368"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.library.american.edu\/mediaservices\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/368\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.library.american.edu\/mediaservices\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=368"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.library.american.edu\/mediaservices\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=368"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.library.american.edu\/mediaservices\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=368"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}