When I was eight years old, my aunt took me to see "The Exorcist," and I spent the next several years worrying that I would be possessed by the devil. This was not a far leap of the imagination for me. My parents and I attended a holiness church, and we lived in a place where ideas of things like demonic possession and brimstone-hellfire were not out of the question by any means. My parents went to church all the time but did not force me to go, although they certainly wanted me to and encouraged me to the point of coercion.
When I wasn't there, I was with Sis, my wild aunt who lived alone in a little trailer near the banks of the Laurel River, perpetually smoking Winston Lights and drinking black coffee and either listening to record albums or watching scary movies on the late show. Sis often begged for my mother to let me stay with her on the weekends, particularly on Sunday nights so we could watch "Murder, She Wrote" together. At the time, I just thought she was terribly lonely, since she had lived there alone as long as I could remember. In retrospect, I wonder if she wasn't keeping me from having to go to church every time the door was cracked.
Sis and I connected on many levels, but mainly through movies and music. She had very eclectic taste. She loved everything from Don Williams to George Michael, from Patsy Cline to Tom Petty to Prince. Sometimes we danced to a particularly good song, often supplied by ELO or John Mellencamp.
Sis especially adored thrillers and horror films. She loved Hitchcock, but only his scary ones. "The Birds" was a favorite. "Psycho," "Frenzy," "Marnie." "That old Mrs. Danvers is a pure-D bitch from hell," she'd say of the housekeeper in "Rebecca," and I was dutifully appalled by her language, since I lived in a house in which even playing cards were frowned upon. Cursing was certainly one thing that would send a person straight to hell. When I mentioned this to Sis, she'd say, "I'd bet you every one of that church bunch does something worse than say a bad word occasionally like me." A pause while she took a deep hit on her cigarette. "Bunch of Harper Valley hypocrites if you ask me."
When my cousins and I stayed at Sis's we especially liked playing in the back bedroom because the closet had a folding door which was perfect for playing "Psycho." One of us would get into the closet and do our best impression of Janet Leigh showering, while the other one took on the steely gaze of Norman Bates. Whomever was playing Norman threw the closet door/shower curtain aside with much aplomb and pantomimed stabbing whomever was in the "shower" until they fell to the floor with one eye largely open. Another cousin had been sounding out the terrifying violin score the entire time. Sometimes Sis watched our reenactments and clapped with her cigarette clutched between her teeth, one eye squinting against the smoke.
Sis was not opposed to gore. One of her favorite movies was John Carpenter's slasher classic "Halloween." She had a special penchant for the "Friday the 13th" movies, which were especially terrifying for me because they took place at the lake. Every year, our entire family went on our one vacation to a lake in the mountains a couple hours south. I spent many nights lying awake in my tent, waiting for Jason Voorhees to slice through the thin fabric and reveal his banged up hockey mask to me just before he plunged a machete through my chest and the cot upon which I slept. Each movie always seemed to have at least one impalement that took place on a bed. Regardless, Sis took me to see all of them. I was nine when the first "Friday the 13th" came out.
But a year before, she took me to the 1979 re-release of "The Exorcist" at the Cinema Four in Corbin, Kentucky. What I remember most about seeing it the first time: the scene where Regan's head turns completely, cracklingly around; Sis putting her hand over my face only once — the infamous scene where Regan uses a crucifix in a very troubling way; looking up at my aunt smoking furiously with one hand and taking great handfuls of popcorn with the other one as she watched the film, transfixed, and unaware that I was so terrified I had slid down into the seat so I couldn't see the action onscreen. I also remember leaving. A woman caught sight of me exiting the theater, holding onto Sis's hand. "I can't believe you brought that little boy to a movie like this!" she said, not so much chiding as she was so amazed she had to articulate it. "Are you scared to death, honey?" Sis steered me on out, not saying a word, but fixing her eyes on the woman's face in such a way that she was very clearly telegraphing: Mind your own damn business, lady.
I wasn't old enough then to understand that I had just seen a masterpiece. I didn't know back then that "The Exorcist" is not only a nearly perfect horror film but also a mediation on belief. For me at the time, it was just a scary movie. In fact, it was the scariest movie I had ever seen. I'm not sure if Sis thought of it much more than that, either. She loved the thrill of being scared, of being startled into jumping and seeing others in the audience do the same. She got tickled at people who screamed during scary films and would laugh at them on the car ride home. "Did you hear that one woman squeal?" she asked, squinting against oncoming headlights. "If I was that scared I believe I'd just stay at home."
Sis didn't even seem to be much concerned about the enormous amount of vulgarity in the film, despite the fact that the language caused a national debate about child actors handling such words. She did know, however, that my parents would have been aghast had they known we went to see "The Exorcist." Since the movie had premiered six years earlier, it had become widely known as not only terrifying but also as pushing the boundaries of good taste. Even people like my parents, who thought it was a sin to go to the movies and knew nothing about pop culture, had heard about it. Violence and gore were okay by folks like them. Coarse language and any hint of sexuality were not. So, once we got back to Sis's trailer and heard my parents pull into the driveway to pick me up, she told me not to tell them what we had seen. "They'd die if they knew we saw that. Tell them we saw 'Norma Rae.'"
"You mean lie?" I was beside myself. In one day alone I had greatly increased my chances of going to hell and/or demonic possession.
"A little lie like that won't hurt nobody," she said. "If they don't want to be lied to they shouldn't be so uptight."
Now, as a parent myself, I think a lot about Sis's judgment. I did spend the next few years convinced that a demon like the one who overtook sweet little Linda Blair would slide down my throat at night when I least expected it. I lived in constant fear of being susceptible to possession just by not being faithful enough, good enough. But nowadays I think what I was taught at church haunted me more than any films I saw. By nature I was someone who was constantly questioning the constraints of the church: Why was cussing worse than ignoring those who needed our help the most? Why was going to the movies a sin worse than being racist, homophobic and sexist? The questions were endless. By the time I was a senior in high school, I had watched "The Exorcist" a few more times on our VCR and had come to understand that nothing else had ever made me examine my own belief system as profoundly as that film. Church certainly hadn't set me to self-study with as much fervor as this movie reviled by every church-goer I knew.
Horror movies could be more than a thrill to make you jump in your theater seat. They could be a way to God.
That same year she took me to see "The Exorcist," we also saw "The Amityville Horror," "When A Stranger Calls" and "Alien" (my older cousin was with us that time and covered my eyes when Sigourney Weaver stripped down to her underwear, but I could see between her fingers and now that scene is the most vivid memory of the film for me). We would go on to sit through the "Friday the 13th" and "Halloween" series. We saw all of the "Nightmare on Elm Street" movies together. Throughout the '80s we watched "The Shining," "The Fog," "The Evil Dead," "Poltergeist," "Pet Semetary," "The Fly," "Creepshow," "Cujo." Meanwhile, my parents assumed we were going to see sunny musicals and family dramas.
Even after I graduated high school I continued to go to the movies with Sis, but it was more sporadic, and I tended to only take her to see horror films I had already seen with my friends and knew that she would love: "Body Parts," "Misery," "The Silence of the Lambs," "The Ring." And then, I stopped going to the movies with her. I saw only one film with her in the years before her death: a terrible remake of "The Omen," back in 2006. We hadn't been to the movies together in so long. I had gotten so caught up in my work, in my daughters, in love. But one evening I went to visit her, and she told me how badly she wanted to go to the movies again. "There's a new scary movie out I want to see," she said. She was 70 years old but already not remembering everything too well. "It's one I saw way back. They've remade it, I think." She couldn't put her finger on the name of it, but I figured it out. "I miss us seeing scary movies together," she said, and she was not a woman who revealed her aloneness to people. This admission had been hard for her, so I made sure we went to the cinema. She loved it despite my own disappointment. At one point in the film, a priest is killed by a lightning rod that sails through the air to impale him. I looked over to find her unfazed. She shoveled popcorn into her mouth while blood gushed from his chest.
She passed away a few years ago and now I carry the grief with me every day, pulsing in the bottom of my belly like the little girl trapped in her own body who writes "Help Me" from inside her torso after the demon has taken over. One of the ways I am reunited with her is when I go see a great scary movie. She would've loved "The Conjuring" films. She would have delighted in "Sinister" and "Insidious" and "The Boy." Recently, when we were leaving the theater after seeing "It," I was surprised to see a little boy trailing just behind a woman that appeared to be his mother. He was about eight years old. At first I was shocked to see such a young child leaving such a scary movie, and wondered at a parent who would take him. But then I thought of Sis. I thought of myself, walking beside her back then. And I laid my judgment aside.
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