8 Great Horror Movies Unfairly Snubbed At The Oscars

Perhaps the most famous horror film of all time, and with good reason. Based on William Peter Blatty’s novel and directed by madman William Friedkin, The Exorcist was, in theory, a strong contender for Oscar victory. It was comfortably superior to its director’s previous film, The French Connection, which won the Best Picture gong 1972, but its unflinching exploration of religious faith combined with explicit sexual language and imagery proved just too much to stomach for many.

The plot follows actress and mother, Chris MacNeil (Ellen Burstyn) as she witnesses her 12-year-old daughter, Regan (Linda Blair), succumb to demonic possession. A spiritual battle ensues as she attempts to save her daughter’s soul with the help of two Catholic priests, the young Father Karras (Jason Miller), who has lost his faith, and Father Merrin (Max von Sydow), a veteran exorcist who knows from experience the dangers of their task ahead.

The Exorcist is a masterclass in screenwriting, direction, cinematography, sound design, editing, and performance. Utterly terrifying, because it’s utterly believable. These characters live in ‘our’ world, but the grotesque force that comes to infest their lives is from somewhere else entirely, somewhere unthinkable. It’s a story of good versus evil in their purest forms, of regret, redemption, and belief.

Reviews at the time were mixed: Variety noted that The Exorcist was “an expert telling of a supernatural horror story... The climactic sequences assault the senses and the intellect with pure cinematic terror.” The New York Times, meanwhile, described the film as “a chunk of elegant occultist claptrap [that]… establishes a new low for grotesque special effects.”

Still, The Academy wasn’t blind to the film’s many qualities and nominated it for no less than 10 Oscars. It won just two: Best Adapted Screenplay, and Best Sound Mixing. Sadly, Best Picture that year went to the painfully inferior crime caper, The Sting.

Oscars: 2