But first, why I hate movies that claim to be true stories

Anybody who watches a lot of horror movies has probably learned the two rules that come along with choosing movies that claim to be based on true events.

Rule #1: Most of these movies take a kernel of supposedly-true tabloid fare and use creative license to molest it until it resembles an urban legend or marketable story. Or, in other words, some nasty video releasing company wants a dollar from you and they’re willing to lie to your face to get it.
Rule #2: The more the movie claims to be a true story, the more it’s going to suck.

For example, when I think about my favorite pseudo-true stories, two that instantly come to mind are Texas Chain Saw Massacre and Psycho. I’m sure we all know by now that the only “true” parts of the story are that the characters of Leatherface and Norman Bates share characteristics with Wisconsin’s favorite son Ed Gein (for those of you who have never lived in Wisconsin, Gein, Sen. Joseph McCarthy and the Violent Femmes are the state’s holy trinity of power with Brett Favre ready to make it four after he retires).

However, aside from Chain Saw Massacre’s sublime use of John Larroquette, these movies don’t really make any attempt on their own to be a true story. Go ahead, read the scroll – it does not say, “This story is true” anywhere. It’s just clever wordplay that to this day keeps people from venturing into the heart of Texas for reasons other than rednecks, the Bush Clan and the Ku Klux Klan.

Now, I don’t claim to have seen every packaging of these two movies, but I personally have never seen a copy of either that claims to be a true story on the packaging. That said, it’s possible that some jackoff has made the brilliant decision to stick these on more recent prints as a way to entice parts of the movie-going public that have spent the last 46 years in a coma.

I guess the point I’m trying to make is that all the buzz about these movies being true stories comes from the viewing public, not the filmmakers.

Several rungs down the ladder from those movies sits 1973’s landmark The Exorcist, one of the most important horror movies of all time. The Exorcist is based on a novel by William Peter Blatty (who, of course, wrote, produced and did a great deal of promoting of the movie as well) that was in turn based on accounts of a 14-year-old Mt. Rainer boy supposedly possessed by demons in 1949. The incident, which was covered by Washington newspapers such as the Post and The Evening Star.

As the story was reported, the boy, known as Roland Doe in most accounts I found, became possessed by a demon entity after messing around with that notorious gift from the minions of Satan over at Parker Brothers, the Ouija Board. If you’ve seen The Exorcist, you know what happens next. First, there were sounds from the walls. Then, the boy started cursing, projectile vomiting and levitating. They brought in a priest, the exorcism got violent (the boy supposedly used a bedspring to slash a bystander) and then he snapped out of it.

As you can probably guess, this turns out to be another case of simian journalists flinging crap at anyone who cared to stand still. Today, though it hasn’t been exposed as a hoax so prominently as the Amityville Horror house has, those involved with the alleged event readily admit that none of it happened like that. As it turns out, the boy spoke obscenely in a low voice (which leads to speaking in Aramaic in a demon voice), spitting (projectile vomiting pea soup), lashing out at those around him (levitating, shaking the bed) and listening to Lionel Ritchie (dancing on the ceiling, more projectile vomiting).

So exorcism fans, this is the story that your precious Exorcist is based upon. Incidentally, there aren’t any readers out there that actually think this really happened do you? If so, e-mail me and I’ll sell you footage of a satyr injecting the presence of a bald, shrieking entity into the midsection of Jenna Jameson. Then a swarthy cable guy comes over and takes off his pants…

Anyway, for our first roundtable review, I picked up Exorcism: The Possession of Gail Bowers, because it claims to be “From the horrifying true story that inspired The Exorcist.” Unfortunately, and to my great suffering, that translates to “the same horseshit story as The Exorcist”, not “what really happened.” That’s strike one. Strike two comes on account of the fact that it’s one of those hip, teenager-aimed horror movies that has been stinking up video stores across the county since Scream came out. Where this movie really blows it is in the fact that it’s poorly acted, written incompetently and has all the tension and mood of an episode of "Gilmore Girls". Before I end up going all the way to strike 666, here’s what happens:

Gail Bowers (Erica Roby, it was her first movie, here’s hoping she goes straight to porno) is a sort-of-attractive, rather bitchy teenager who lives with church-going sister Anne (Noel Thurman, who looks like Tara Reid if she was a Jesus freak instead of a bloated, skanky lush) and her beefy husband Clark (Brick Firestone, also knows as Crunch Nutsmack or Slab Bonerblitzen or Rip Peckinploofer). Gail’s mom and dad are dead and how, when or why is none of our business. Gail doesn’t want to go to school, so she gets a jeep as a payoff. Because she has a jeep she meets a friend named Francie (Rebekah Kochan, who would have been Juliette Lewis had there not already been one). After the glow of the jeep wears off (in fact, it might have been stolen, I don’t remember seeing it again) they decide to dip into the vodka and play with Francie’s Ouija board (you see, because it’s based on that one true story). This is where the movie fucks up for the first time, because we’ve already seen Gail being fondled by a shadowy hand, does she get possessed because of the Ouija board or was she already possessed? It doesn’t get any easier after this, though.

Gail becomes even more of a bitch and lashes out at everyone the next day, including Francie, who goes inside to get her damned Ouija board. Something attacks…or scares…or possesses her or something inside, because she runs to her house screaming, vomits, morphs in the mirror, strips, hops in the shower and rips her own eyes out. Sure, I can see why she wou…huh? As it turns out, her part of the story is over so it doesn’t matter.

Remember the Exorcist? Well, what part of it was the most shocking? Was it the crab walk? The pea soup? The fact that they would go on to make Exorcist II: Heretic? No, it was the cursing! So, when writing Exorcism, writer/director Leigh Scott (or Leigh Slawner, depending on whether or not he’s embarrassed of the movie, apparently) decided that, if Linda Blair spewing out X number of curse words netted the Exorcist $165 million, three times the cursing ought to make twice as much money!

I don’t remember exactly what was said in the Exorcist other than “your mother sucks cocks in hell”, but Exorcism’s steady stream of obscenities from Gail as she tries to seduce her block-headed father-in-law is far from edgy and just annoying because a) Gail looks like she’s about 17 and b) she a terrible actress who sounds drugged and bored instead of erotic, kind of like a phone sex operator 15 hours into a double shift.

Concerned, Clark arranges for Dr. Richard Thornhill to visit Gail. Dr. Thornhill, who has the training necessary to completely bog down any scene with his presence, reaches the conclusion that Gail is possessed because of strange sounds he hears on his tape recorder after one session. Remember how, in The Exorcist, they try actual medical methods of curing Regan before turning to exorcism? Here, Thornhill considers it might be something rational for mere minutes before hitching his star to demonic possession (“I’ve known her for an hour, she’s possessed. Just accept it, it cannot be anything else!”).

There’s only one man for the job…Brick Firestone! No, not really. Max von Sydow! No, that would have blown the budget. No, that man is the one, the only Father Thomas Bates! Oh, did I forget to mention him? Actually, he is introduced in the first seconds of the film. Bates blows his load all over the exorcism of some girl and drifts away from the film for the next hour. Though it didn’t mean a thing to me at the time (I assumed it was part of the movie’s end played at the beginning, another obviously dumb choice some filmmakers choose to employ), the demon he failed to extract in the beginning is the same demon that inhabits Gail. At the time, I thought Gail just looks like a buck-toothed, stringy-haired Rae Dawn Chong when she is possessed. At that point, it was impossible to care.

Father Bates performs the exorcism, kills himself to rise again and saves the day…blah blah blah. The exorcism scene itself is a joke for many reasons. First off, we’ve already seen it before but done competently in the Exorcist. Second, Father Bates is impossible to take seriously because he looks exactly like venerable tough-guy TV actor David Keith and wears dark shades throughout the exorcism. So, basically, he’s the tough-hearted, smooth-lovin’ priest that doesn’t play by the rules. He does provide my favorite part of the movie though, when he turns the tide of the failing exorcism by “Hulking up” – or doing the thing Hulk Hogan used to do when he’d start shaking and was basically invincible for the rest of the match after getting his ass kicked for 25 minutes. Hilariously, Mel Gibson has been using the exact same act in his movies for years.

Exorcism is a terrible movie; a wretched mélange of stolen bits that Roger Corman would be ashamed of. This movie bastardizes The Exorcist (natch), The Entity, Poltergeist, and of course, the movie that made it again profitable to make exorcism movies, The Exorcism of Emily Rose. The actors are all beautiful yet completely uninteresting. If you’re a fan of exorcism movies, don’t stop here – there are no traces of the “good vs. evil” or Catholic undertones that probably draw you to them.

There WAS, however, a lot of Gail in not much clothes. I’ve got a feeling she got training in this movie to make the successful jump from bad actress being violated with not many clothes on to bad actress being violated with no clothes on at all. Coming up next on Showtime Golden Shower, Erica Roby stars in Excrement: The Piss-ession of Gail Bowels. Co-staring Uri N. Smith as Father Master Bates. (Gross.)