Director William Friedkin Dead at Age 87
William Friedkin, director of multiple Academy Award winning The French Connection and The Exorcist, has died.
Photo credit: Shudder
The Films
A brief, incomplete filmography:
Crime thriller The French Connection won a staggering FIVE Academy Awards, including Gene Hackman for Best Actor. A pre-Jaws Roy Scheider was nominated for his role, as well. (Also one of cinema’s greatest vehicular chase sequences – Ed.)
Sorcerer, the largely overlooked, cynical thriller, starring post-Jaws Scheider.
Cruising, a controversial film about a killer among LGBT subculture-with a connection to The Exorcist– starring Al Pacino
The Exorcist
Despite the awards heaped upon Friedkin’s The French Connection, Friedkin is most remembered for The Exorcist. It was the movie that turned horror on its head, changing not only how horror was written, but how it was accepted and perceived by general audiences and by the critics.
It’s been said many times, but those born after The Exorcist don’t really grasp how much horror was changed by this film.
Content, SFX, subliminal messages inserted into the film and soundtrack, and marketing-everything about this movie was groundbreaking.
Name another horror film nominated for ten Academy Awards, in a time when:
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The awards actually mattered
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Horror was considered less than trash, and horror films were usually only made when the studio needed quick cash from teens with disposable income.
The Exorcist had multiple plots, was religious, and was pretty highbrow. A hell of a risk (no pun intended) that only Friedkin could take-and wildly succeed.
The hype around this movie before, during, and after release will never be matched by another horror film. If you remember The Blair Witch Project’s viral marketing, take away the internet and somehow manage to quadruple that.
The fact that the movie is still listed consistently as the top horror film-or at least in the top three-after fifty years is a testament that it did, indeed, live up to the hype.
Just like William Friedkin.
William Friedkin’s work is readily available on streaming services, DVD, and Blu-Ray.
