The Exorcist Screening: 7:00 Tonight (Friday, October 27, 2017)

Nights of Horror and Thrills: Day 3

Join our free screening in Coleman Hall 1255 to celebrate the art of film in Illinois. 

OCT27

The Exorcist Screening

Public

 · Hosted by EIU Embarras Valley Film Festival

In The Exorcist (1973) something beyond evil is happening in teen Regan’s (Linda Blair) bedroom. Regan has brutally changed both in the way she looks and the way she acts, with violent outbursts on everyone who comes in contact with her. Her worried mother (Ellen Burstyn) gets in contact with a priest who comes to the conclusion that Regan is possessed by a demon that must be exorcised.

The Exorcist is the sensational, shocking horror story about devil possession and the subsequent exorcism of the demonic spirits from a young, innocent girl (of a divorced family), but it was also notable for being one of the biggest box-office successes. And it remains one of the few horror films nominated for Best Picture.

The film's screenplay - a horror-tinged western (and tale of good vs. evil), was faithfully based upon author William Peter Blatty's 1971 best-selling theological-horror novel of the same name.

Chicago native and Academy-Award winning director William Friedkin helms the movie. Interestingly enough, Friedken began making movies while working at Chicago’s WGN after graduating from high school. 

Critically, it was presented with ten Academy Award nominations, two of which won (Best Adapted Screenplay and Best Sound). The other eight nominations included: Best Picture, Best Actress (Ellen Burstyn), Best Supporting Actor (Jason Miller), Best Supporting Actress (Linda Blair), Best Director, Best Cinematography (Owen Roizman), Best Art Direction/Set Decoration, and Best Film Editing. [Until The Silence of the Lambs (1991), the film was the only horror film to be nominated for Best Picture in Academy Award history.]

But some had problems with the film when it was released in 1973. The film was enormously popular with moviegoers at Christmas-time of 1973, but some portions of the viewing audience fled from theaters due to nausea or sheer fright/anger The controversial nature of the film's content - exorcism (accompanied by blasphemies, obscenities and graphic physical shocks), was supposedly based upon an authentic, nearly two-month long exorcism performed in 1949 on a 14-year old boy. Unfortunately, the film spawned inferior imitations, as well.

Most problematically, The Exorcist draws on paranoia of its period, showing a fear of women, young people and the outside world.

Despite these misgivings, The Exorcist definitely meets our goal to highlight the horror film in Illinois, and, perhaps, give us another night of horror and thrills.

OCT27

Horror and the Thriller Roundtable

Public

 · Hosted by EIU Embarras Valley Film Festival

Join us for a roundtable discussion about the multiple roads to horror and thrills. For my portion of the roundtable, I will be exploring our festival films through ecocinema and ecofeminist lenses.

Roundtable 2017

Perhaps the most iconic movie monster from the 1950s forward is Godzilla, a giant reptile who stars in dozens of movies from Toho Studios in Japan. As a creature of its age, beginning with its 1954 debut, Godzilla springs to life from the radiation left by nuclear testing and functions as a condemnation of the U.S. atomic attack on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945. As Kyohei Yamane-hakase (Takashi Shimura) warns in the original film, “if we continue conducting nuclear tests, it's possible that another Godzilla might appear somewhere in the world again.” As a monstrous result of humanity’s destruction of the environment, Godzilla serves as a mixture of Maurice Yacowar’s disaster categories, embodying a traditional natural monster, but also illustrating Yacowar’s natural attack sub-genre. Godzilla also presents a cautionary symbol of the dangerous consequences of mistreating the natural world—monstrous nature on the attack. Gareth Edwards’ remake of Godzilla (2014) take this theme further, since Godzilla returns from the ocean bottom to destroy the MUTOs and restore the balance of nature, according to Dr. Ichiro Serizawa (Ken Watanabe). As Serizawa declares, instead of attempting to destroy both Godzilla and the MUTOs, the Navy should “Let them fight.” For Serizawa, “The arrogance of men is thinking nature is in their control and not the other way around.” 

Readings of the horror film showcase the roots of such a monster: human and nonhuman nature. Such environmental approaches draw on class struggles, evolution, human ecology, and gendered bodies. What connects these seemingly divergent approaches?: a human cause and a biotic solution. Humanity may contribute to the malevolent elements of nature on the big screen. But these films also suggest that embracing interdependent relationships with nonhuman nature may save us all.

I read the films we’re watching this week through a variety of monstrous nature lenses. The Brain Eaters is obviously parasite horror, but it also draws on a (tragic) evolutionary narratives. This evolutionary view is most evident in films highlighting humanity’s creation of deadly natural monsters like the parasite. While biologists would agree that parasites are a necessary part of our biosphere, the general public tends to view parasites as complicated, dangerous, and deadly. The Brain Eaters lines up with films like The Thaw, which connects the horror genre with possible consequences of climate change and human exploitation of the environment in the Anthropocene Age. In the film, parasites have reawakened only because human activity has warmed the earth and melted the ice, so the film’s irresponsible scientist Dr. Kruipen (Val Kilmer) decides to unleash them on populations in the United States, infecting enough humans to “make a real difference.” Through biological eco-terrorism, Kruipen hopes to change the minds of climate change cynics, even if it means he and many others may die.

Sita Sings the Blues and The Exorcist, on the other hand, call for an ecofeminist reading that sees women’s bodies as “frontiers” or the woman (especially the adolescent woman) as monster. Such an approach amplifies the relationship between consuming, exploiting, and raping the body and consuming the land by drawing on what Annette Kolodny calls “America’s oldest and most cherished fantasy” grounded in “an experience of the land as feminine…enclosing the individual in an environment of receptivity, repose, and painless integral satisfaction” (The Lay of the Land 4).  This feminization of nature draws on gender stereotypes. For Kolodny, “men sought sexual and filial gratification from the land, while women sought there the gratifications of home and family relations” (The Land Before Her 12). As ecofeminist Jytte Nhanenge argues, “there is an interconnection between the domination of women and poor people, and the domination of nature” (xxvii). All of the films viewed this week demonstrate ways monster and nature can merge.

2017 Embarras Valley Film Festival--October 25-28

SCHEDULE OF EVENTS:

All on the Campus of Eastern Illinois University!

Wednesday, October 25 in Coleman Auditorium
7:00 The Brain Eaters (Dir. Bruno Vesota, 1958) with costume contest*

In The Brain Eaters, strange things are happening in Riverdale, Illinois. A huge, seemingly alien structure has been found jutting out of the earth. Sent to investigate the origin of the mysterious object, Senator Walter Powers discovers that parasites from the center of the earth have infiltrated the town, taking control of the authorities and workers, making communication with the outside world impossible, and leaving the responsibility of stopping the invasion up to Powers and a small group of free individuals. 

*The costume contest will be held prior to the viewing of The Brain Eaters. Audience members are encouraged to participate to win prizes. We ask all contestants to arrive 15 minutes early to the auditorium stage to register. The contest will begin at 7:00 and prizes awarded to our top three contestants. Costumes will be judged on their creativity, quality, and crowd appeal. 

Thursday, October 26 in Coleman Auditorium
3:30 Sita Sings the Blues (Dir. Nina Paley, 2008)

Sita Sings the Blues is an animated version of the epic Indian tale of Ramayana set to the 1920s jazz vocals of Annette Hanshaw. Sita, the Hindu Goddess from the epic Ramayana accompanies Lord Rama on a fourteen-year exile, but is abducted by a revenge-seeking Ravana, the ruler of Lanka. The film intertwines thrilling tales of torment with memoir sketches that connect the past with the present day.

Friday, October 27 in the English Conference Room
4:30 Horror and the Thriller Roundtable

With Kevin Anderson, Political Science; Robin L. Murray, English; Carrie Wilson Brown, Communication Studies

In Coleman Auditorium
7:00 The Exorcist (Dir. William Friedkin, 1973)

In The Exorcist something beyond evil is happening in teen Regan’s (Linda Blair) bedroom. Regan has brutally changed both in the way she looks and the way she acts, with violent outbursts on everyone who comes in contact with her. Her worried mother (Ellen Burstyn) gets in contact with a priest who comes to the conclusion that Regan is possessed with a demon that must be exorcised. 

Saturday, October 28 in Coleman Auditorium

2:00 Student Film Festival Winners
4:00 Film Festival Horror and Thriller in Illinois Selections