9 Classic Movie Scenes That Were Awful To Film

The role of the director on set is to keep all parties on the same page in the pursuit of your singular vision, and William Friedkin certainly managed that when making The Exorcist. The second half of the seventies horror masterpiece centres on the exorcism of Regan MacNeil, and Friedkin conspired to make the experience as unpleasant for the actors as it would have been for the characters involved.

The set was built inside a freezer to ensure the actors’ breath was visible on camera (Linda Blair, then a young teenager, performs the majority of the scene in a nightie). This alone created a tense working atmosphere, but Friedkin wasn’t done there.

He patrolled the set firing off a pistol loaded with blanks to keep actor Jason Miller appropriately on edge. He slapped another actor (an ordained Catholic priest) across the face to prepare him for a scene. Blair and Ellen Burnstyn were both left bruised by the harnesses used to emulate the demonic forces hurling them across the room.

It’s hard to deny the effectiveness of Friedkin’s techniques; while the horror may be a little tame by today’s standards, the film is a true classic. The maverick director’s techniques no doubt yielded results - you wouldn’t want to work with him a second time, though.