chapotraphouse

I'm sorry about your mom's passing.

I saw Star Wars and Jaws at movie theaters. Star Wars blew my mind. Jaws scared the crap out me. For the life of me - I can't remember exactly when I saw The Exorcist. It came out in 1973. Did I see it before the other two? After? In any case - the vital thing is I watched it on tv. I must have secretly watched it late at night on Creature Features. And in the fat-back tv era - the tv experience was shit. The resolution was low. Maybe like a sort of crappy 480p rip today? Broadcasts were "edited for tv" and there was pan-and-scan. At best watching a movie like The Exorcist was 1/10th as powerful as watching it at the movies.

Unlike the other two - I thought it was "scary" but I quickly forgot about it. Decades later I watched it at home and I really liked it. Right now - I'm thinking about watching it again. Maybe I can't. I used to love horror - cough - to death. The problem is that I've watched 100s of hours of terrible, shitty movies and tv series that ripped off The Exorcist in a way that might make it hard for me to enjoy it now.

An example is a series I watched where possessed people spewed CGI vomit that flowed upwards so it covered the ceiling. For fuck's sake. That's not scary. That's silly and dumb! [Ninja edit. Maybe it was Outcast?]

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Pan and scan

Pan and scan is a film editing technique used to modify widescreen images for display on a fullscreen screen. It involves cropping the sides of the original widescreen image and panning across it when the shot's focus changes. This cropping can result in the loss of key visual elements but may draw the viewers' attention towards a particular portion of the scene.