Who and What Was Behind ‘The Exorcist’ Movies?

When I watched the movie “The Exorcist” as a young man in 1973, it scared the heebie jeebies out of me. At the time, I lived alone in a modest apartment and hardly slept all night. This was a new film genre, and it kind of traumatized me. The other film that hit me hard was the cage and Russian-roulette scene in the movie “The Deer Hunter” (1978). What’s curious is that I watched “The Exorcist” for a second time last year and it had much lesser affect. After 45 years of exposure to more generalized trauma in our entertainment and culture, it seems I’m used to it or desensitized.

“The Exorcist” was followed by a whole generation of slasher movies. And, by sheer coincidence, America experienced what is called the Satanic Panic. Much of it was centered around ritual abuse. At the time, there were a number of stranger-on-stranger crimes of a hideous nature, often involving self-professed killers, who claimed to be possessed.

Today, skeptics and pervert justice warriors — who were little more than a twinkle in their pop’s eye at the time — dismiss it as hysteria and “conspiracy theory.” Indeed, skepticism on this and Pedogate has become the default position. But the wags and suckers have no context in which to judge that period. They are also desensitized — as well as brainwashed.

Ted Bundy, when he was advising the Green River task force, recommended that they stake out and look for suspects at the next big Seattle slasher film festival. Bundy stated that such movies had an impact on what he called his “entity.”

As a reminder, “The Exorcist” focused on the story of Regan, an 11-year-old girl and daughter of a movie actress residing in Washington, D.C. The child becomes possessed by an ancient demon, and it’s up to a small group of overwhelmed yet determined clergy to somehow rescue Regan from her unspeakable fate.

A scathing review of the book in TIME magazine proved prophetic in a backhanded way.

“It is a pretentious, tasteless, abominably written, redundant pastiche of superficial theology, comic-book psychology, Grade C movie dialogue and Grade Z scatology. In short, The Exorcist will be a bestseller and almost certainly a drive-in movie,” TIME’s review stated.

“Appallingly effective on the surface,” Gary Arnold wrote in The Washington Post. “‘The Exorcist’ is appallingly worthless beneath the surface.”

Well, maybe not so worthless. But with a purpose?

Now, I learn that the author, William Peter Blatty of the original “Exorcist” and “Exorcist III” (1990) was US Air Force’s Psychological Warfare Policy chief. Maybe this is all just a big cowinkydink for skeptics to again dismiss. Or is it possible these films were part of a mass psychological trauma exercise? “Exorcist III” was written and directed by Blatty and starred George C. Scott. It’s said to be more horrific than the first. I wouldn’t know. I’ve never watched it other than clips.

Additionally, Blatty’s book “Twinkle Twinkle Killer Kane” was about a military mental hospital with hints of a mind control program run amok. The doctor was played by Stacy Keach in the movie adaptation called “The Ninth Configuration.”

However, “Exorcist III” caught the rapt attention and interest of several of America’s most notorious serial killers. Jeffrey Dahmer, for example, told police detective Dennis Murphy that he watched it two or three times a week for six months and identified with the Gemini Killer. Dahmer thought he was possessed. Dr. Park Dietz — a forensic psychiatrist indicated that Dahmer would watch “The Exorcist III” and “Return of the Jedi” to set “the right mood” before cruising for victims and eventually murdering them. Sometimes Dahmer would also bring his victims home and watch a portion of the films with them and direct their attention to certain scenes he believed were important.

David Berkowitz, the Son of Sam killer, met with the leading Catholic exorcist Father Martin, who proclaimed him possessed.

Brad Dourif’s performance as the Gemini Killer in “Exorcist III” would move up and down between calm and casual — even a little funny —and a complete raving psychotic.

The alleged killer of the Idaho 4, Bryan Kohberger looks like a fit with the Gemini type.

“The Exorcist III” movie was also the favorite of Danny Rollings, the Gainesville Ripper, who also identified with Gemini. Rollings in the flesh in public appearances acted like the calm “gracious me” part of Dourf’s performance — but he also identified with the possessed part [see the second video below].

12 Comments on Who and What Was Behind ‘The Exorcist’ Movies?

  1. Alfred Hitchcock normalized the murder of spouses, business associates, and anybody else that might allow a greedy psychopath to profit monetarily. We’re all occult initiates according to author Michael Hoffman. It’s been a slow creep over decades of planting the seeds of psychopathy in our minds. Those seeds flourish in a small percentage of susceptible people who then commit outrages and we are all enthralled.

    • I wonder how much he might have learned from his days filming in the camps of Dachau and Auschwitz,as the official BBC film director ? I wouldn’t be at all these ‘iconic’ flicks were simply an Mk-Ultra construct,mass trauma dropped into the collective consciousness al a JFK and 9/11 (Revelation of the Method in masonic parlance) ?

      How Texas Chainsaw massacre got released is beyond imagination.Absolutely merit less mind-fuckery of unfathomable proportions.?

  2. THE “DEMON” IS THEIR TWISTED MIND
    YOUTUBE:Serial Killer Danny Rolling Defends Sondra London
    The Sondra London Channel
    1.86K subscribers
    119,223 views Aug 30, 2008
    Danny Rolling defends Sondra London against libelous & slanderous attacks. This unedited version was not aired.

    THE TWISTED TALE OF GAINESVILLE RIPPER’ KILLER DANNY ROLLING, WHO MURDERED & MUTILATED COLLEGE KIDS

    Danny Rolling, known for killing five university students, aspired to be a “superstar” like Ted Bundy.
    By Benjamin H. Smith

    Murders A-Z is a collection of true crime stories that take an in-depth look at both little-known and famous murders throughout history.

    In the summer of 1990, the college town of Gainesville, Florida found itself in the grip of terror after five students were murdered in quick succession. The victims had been fatally stabbed, and, in some cases, raped and mutilated, their bodies posed in sexual positions. One was found decapitated.

    Quickly dubbed the “The Gainesville Ripper,” the serial killer initially eluded capture when police first identified a troubled teen as their main suspect, before realizing the gruesome murders were actually the work of Danny Rolling, a 30-something drifter with a long criminal history. Rolling was already in custody for armed robbery; he would later be given five death sentences, for every murder he committed that August. Before his execution, police would learn the Gainesville murders weren’t his only homicides and the entire affair would inspire the maker of “Scream,” one of the most famous horror films of all time.

    Perhaps ironically given his nefarious life of crime, Daniel Harold Rolling was born in 1954 in Shreveport, Louisiana to a police lieutenant who allegedly abused his wife and children, both physically and verbally. “He’d beat the hell out of them,” Danny’s cousin Charles Strozier would later say, according to the South Florida Sun-Sentinel. “It was like a switch. It would be on one minute, off the next.” As a child, Danny would run away from home and camp in the woods, indulging in petty crime and voyeurism, by his own admission during the court trial.

    After dropping out of high school, Rolling joined the Air Force in 1972, but he was discharged honorably after only serving two years, reports the Orlando Sentinel. (According to court documents, Rolling’s commanding officer told his mother that “he was not mature and did not have the nervous system or maturity necessary for military life.”) While he briefly lived what seemed to be a normal life — becoming active in the Pentecostal Church, getting married, and having a daughter — his mother claimed he “lost it” after his wife filed for divorce, in a videotaped testimony during the 1994 court trial. Over the following decade, he would turn to crime and spent extended periods of time behind bars for armed robbery in Georgia, Alabama and Mississippi.  “Lucifer told me eight souls for every year I’d done in prison,” said Rolling, according to CNN — counting the triple homicide of the Grissom family in his hometown Shreveport, he did kill at least eight people.

    The Grissom family — William, 55, his daughter, Julie, 24, and grandson Sean, 8, were preparing dinner when a man broke into their apartment, stabbing them all to death. Julie was raped and posed; bite marks were found on her breasts. Rolling, who was long considered the only suspect in the 1989 murder of the Grissom family after police found similarities between the crime scenes, confessed to their murders in the moments before he was executed, reports the Sarasota Herald-Tribune. Rolling was back in Shreveport in the fall of 1989 after being paroled from jail in Mississippi.

    Months later, in May 1990, Rolling got into a fight with his father and shot him twice, once in the stomach and once in the face, reports the Orlando-Sentinel. Wanted for attempted murder, he fled Louisiana, staying briefly in Sarasota, Florida, where he broke into the home of Janet Frake and raped her, reports the Sarasota Herald-Tribune. Frake reportedly talked her way out of becoming Rolling’s fourth murder victim, and though Rolling wore a mask and was never charged with the crime, DNA evidence triggered by Sarasota police in 1996 indicated a match.

    In late August 1990, Rolling rolled into Gainesville, home of the University of Florida, setting up a campsite in the woods outside town, just as he had done as a teenage runaway. In the early morning hours of August 24, armed with a pistol and a military hunting knife, he broke into the apartment of Sonja Larson and Christina Powell, two teenage first-year students at the university. He murdered Larson first, covering her mouth with duct tape and stabbing her in her sleep. He then raped Powell before killing her and cutting off her nipples. Afterward, he cleaned the crime scene and posed both victims in sexualized positions, reports CNN.

    The next night he broke into the home of 18-year-old Christa Hoyt, who attended nearby Santa Fe Community College. He waited for her to return home, and then raped and stabbed her, rupturing her aorta. He cut off her nipples and decapitated her, putting her head on a bookshelf, and propping her body up in bed, according to CNN.

    After being unable to reach their daughter for several days, Christina Powell’s parents traveled from their home in Jacksonville, Florida, and discovered her and Larson’s bodies on the afternoon of August 26th. In the early morning hours of the 27th, police discovered Hoyt’s body after she missed her midnight shift as a clerk at the Alachua County Sheriff’s Department.

    That night, as news of the gruesome murders rippled through campus, Rolling struck again, breaking into the apartment of Tracy Paules and Manuel Taboada, both 23. Rolling stabbed Taboada as he slept, but the former football player awoke and fought back before being subdued by 31 stabs. Paules walked in on the attack, then ran into the bathroom and locked the door, but Rolling broke it down. He then raped her for hours, before finally killing her with three stab wounds to the back. Their bodies were discovered the following day. According to the Orlando-Sentinel, Paules’ last words were seeking a tragic confirmation: ”You’re the one, aren’t you?’

    As news of the killings spread through Gainesville, panic set in, with many students choosing to leave the campus. “Parents took a lot of their children out of college,” former University of Florida music major Sharon Barnes told the Ocala Star-Banner years later. Police, meanwhile, focused on Edward Humphrey, a 19-year-old man diagnosed with manic depression who had circumstantial ties to the crimes and had recently been arrested for assaulting his grandmother who insisted that he didn’t hit her, according to the New York Times. Humphrey’s bail was set at $1 million and he would eventually serve 14 months in state prison on assault charges, before being exonerated. “My brother wasn’t well off mentally to begin with, and this has rattled him to his foundations,” said his brother George to the New York Times. 

    In the meantime, the real killer had returned to his old ways of armed robbery. On September 7, 1990, Rolling walked into a Winn-Dixie supermarket brandishing a pistol. An unidentified witness told the Ocala Star-Banner he yelled out, “This is a robbery. Get your money out!” Police quickly responded and after a quick chase, took Rolling into custody. “Boy, you guys are good,” arresting officer Ken Raym remembers him saying at the time.

    Unsurprisingly, the killings stopped, life in Gainesville returned to normal and investigators began building their case. While investigating a bank robbery that occurred right after the murders, police discovered Rolling’s campsite, and evidence tying him to the crimes, including a cassette tape with chilling country songs referring to his plans. DNA evidence, including semen, later confirmed Rolling’s involvement in the murders. While in custody, Rolling was named as the primary suspect in the Grissom killings and sentenced to life in prison for bank robbery.

    In February 1994, on the eve of his murder trial, Rolling pled guilty to five counts of murder and three counts each of sexual battery and armed burglary. “I’ve been running from first one thing and then another all my life, whether from problems at home, or with the law, or from myself,” he told the court, reports the Los Angeles Times. “But there are some things that you just can’t run from, and this being one of those.” A month later, a Florida jury sentenced him to death, by a vote of 12 to none.

    While on death row, Rolling sold paintings, reports the Gainesville Sun, and wrote a book with his fiancée, the true crime writer Sondra London, titled, The Making of a Serial Killer: The True Story of the Gainesville Murders in the Killer’s Own Words. A Florida judge later ruled that the state could seize all profits from the book, invoking the Son of Sam law. 

    In the early ’90s, aspiring screenwriter Kevin Williamson drew on the case of The Gainesville Ripper as a source of inspiration for a screenplay he was writing about a series of murders in a college town and the circuitous search for the killers. That screenplay would eventually be turned into the 1996 film “Scream,” which was directed by “Master of Horror” Wes Craven and revitalize the slasher movie genre for the self-aware Generation X.

    After 12 years on death row, Danny Rolling was put to death by lethal injection on October 25, 2006. When asked for his final words, Rolling burst into song, singing a rambling gospel number, with the refrain, “none greater than thee, O Lord, none greater than thee,” before the mics were turned off and the drugs entered his bloodstream. Shortly before his execution, he gave a note to his “spiritual adviser,” the Reverend Mike Hudspeth, confessing to the murders of the Grissom family 17 years earlier. “I, and I alone am guilty,” Rolling wrote, according to the Herald-Tribune. “It was my hand that took those precious lights out of this ole dark world. With all my heart & soul would I could bring them back.”

    Rolling, who aspired to be as infamous as Ted Bundy, never quite saw his dream fulfilled, with the authorities turning the focus on victims and their families rather than glamorizing him. 

    Oxygen’s “Mark of a Killer” delves into the psyches of serial killers with one-hour episodes focusing on their postmortem signatures. Watch the series now to find out how Danny Rolling became the Gainesville Ripper.

  3. In my view it doesn’t seem like Bryan Kohberger actually wanted to get away with his murders. Far from being a crime expert PhD criminology scholar, he left evidence and clues everywhere. He is in reality a moron.

    This includes a surviving eyewitness who got a look at him. He left behind a knife sheath with his DNA. He was tracked by cell phone pings. He stalked his victims and made 12 trips to Moscow from Pullman in the three months before the crime. He turned his cell phone off for two hours during the slayings and then back on right afterwards. He then took a very round about trip back to his residence and returned to the crime scene to gawk the next morning. He was spotted on surveillance driving the infamous white Elantra numerous times in his comings and goings. It appears he made appearances on social media and acted strangely before his arrest. And that’s just what the prosecution has revealed so far.

  4. Few people relate the Batman movies with social conditioning, but spare a moment whilst watching them to consider the themes and how they tie in to everything we’re living through now. There’s also a strong connection to the British Monarchy.

    Bats were said to be the origin of the ‘virus’. Coroner is another word for crown. In the 1989, we regularly see the name ‘Monarch Theatre’ in the background. We see a Joker abusing the trust of the public (every western leader seems to get called jokers/clowns while they burn down our culture). The joker in the movie goes on to to throw money at the public to distract them (in the UK, this happened under the name of ‘furlough’) whilst he poisons them.

    Right now, we’re witnessing a real life Royal Clown, Harry, as he plays out ‘Monarch Theatre’.

  5. Definitely a scary movie. But the scariest for me was the original “Psycho,” when the investigator turns that chair around at the end of the movie to see a horrifying corpse of the killer’s dead mother (which he murdered)–I screamed at the sight! No wonder when it first came out you had to “see it from the beginning”! (I could not see it in the theatre then…too young. You had to be 12 or something…. Saw it on TV).

  6. Those of William Peter Blatty’s ilk are into the occult and child sacrifice and would have witnessed demonic possessions. You will find truths sprinkled in movies but most people are indoctrinated to treat as fiction since they saw it in a movie. They mock and make fun of the goy.

  7. This article is correlative of the works of 2 contemportary writers’ works (i.e., Jasun Horsley, ’16 Maps of Hell’; and Dave McGowan, ‘Programmed to Kill’); who both outline and detail the strange, unique and startling coincidences that are borne witness to once one investigates the backgrounds and histories of a number of prominent serial killers and lone gun murderers in the USA (i.e., similar military backgrounds; similar family histories; similar criminal backgrounds; similar fictitious narratives invoked by TPTB vis-a-vis more serious crimes; etc.; etc.). Suffice it to say, there is much, much more than meets the eye when it comes to the narratives spewed out by MSM vis-a-vis serial killers’/lone gun murderers’ in the USA. That is all! RGB-Y3 out!!

  8. ‘Rosemary’s Baby’, ‘The Omen’, ‘Brotherhood of the Bell’, the movie version of the play ‘Child’s Play’ (with Robert Preston & Jeff Bridges) plus several made for tv movies brought to the surface the vile satanic idolatry that has since become the SOP of today’s global glob gov.

    ‘The Manchurian Candidate’ demonstrated the preferred method of achieving mass mind disturbance through the production of mind controlled prostitute spies & assassins.

    So fascinating that it makes the classics seem pointless.

    It is where we must be wise as serpents & innocent as doves.

Post a Comment

Winter Watch

Discover more from Winter Watch

Subscribe now to keep reading and get access to the full archive.

Continue reading