10 Bizarre Horror Movie Moments You Just Accepted

The late, great William Friedkin may be one of the finest minds ever to work within the horror genre, but it’s safe to say that some of the additions he made to the all-time classic that is The Exorcist were a bit odd.

Perhaps the most perplexing alteration made in his 2000 Director’s Cut - which was developed primarily in response to the wishes of screenwriter and original Exorcist novelist William Peter Blatty, who had fallen out with Friedkin due to the removal of a key scene in the theatrical version - is the presence of extra subliminal appearances from Pazuzu, the demon that possesses Regan McNeil (Linda Blair).

Rather than just wisely dropping in the one spooky shot of its face - as seen in the theatrical cut - Friedkin opted to get a little too trigger-happy, with the demon’s face most infamously and bizarrely appearing behind Chris MacNeil (Ellen Burstyn) on the kitchen extractor fan for a second.

The little detail doesn’t really add anything to a character’s experience in the film - Chris doesn’t even see it here - and just looks a bit silly really. Pazuzu flashes up only once in the theatrical version, in a hauntingly intense dream sequence experienced by Jason Miller's Damien Karras, and the impact of said scene is diminished somewhat by the 2000 version's tinkering.

With this “Version You’ve Never Seen” now ironically being the one most people will have seen first, though, viewers have largely just accepted this subliminal weirdness as part of The Exorcist furniture.