Scarlett Johansson is to star in a remake of The Exorcist, William Friedkin’s 1973 horror movie – news that made me twist in my chair like an angry, hissing cat. The writer-director will be Mike Flanagan, who has made Stephen King adaptations. But – sniff – not the classic Stephen King adaptations.
The Exorcist isn’t your average horror franchise: it’s a sacred calling, with meaning that goes far beyond the fabled snaking cinema queues of horror-blockbuster legend. The most recent attempt at a sequel, The Exorcist: Believer (2023), starring the original’s Ellen Burstyn, failed because it dealt in tawdry Halloween jump-scares. The real Exorcist, based on the 1971 book by William Peter Blatty, is about good, evil, faith, mortality, memory, depravity, degradation of childhood and personal sacrifice. It’s as heartbreaking as it is chilling. Linda Blair’s Regan hovering above a bed, click-turning her head 180 degrees, has precious little to do with it.
This misunderstanding leads to poor remakes – though the 1995 version of Village of the Damned is a classic of synthetic blond wigs and unintentional hilarity. Good horror happens in the small moments. It’s Carrie feeling beautiful – hopeful, normal – at the school dance (it doesn’t matter about the bucket of blood; just about the cruelty). It’s The Shining’s Wendy being scared of Jack before they even set foot in the Overlook Hotel. People think horror simply needs to be scary. It actually needs to be upsetting, moving and true first. Don’t you dare ruin The Exorcist, ScarJo! I’ll be watching.
Richard Curtis has donated a Blackadder script to an auction to help raise funds for the children’s education charity Theirworld. It’s a Christmas-themed script called Blackadder in Bethlehem, abandoned for fear “it might cause too much offence”. Instead, Curtis and Ben Elton wrote 1988’s Blackadder’s Christmas Carol. Curtis describes the discarded script as “a strange mixture of Fawlty Towers and Life of Brian”. Which was a problem... why?
For devotees of Blackadder, which ran from 1983 to 1989 on BBC1, this is confusing. The ethos of the show seemed predicated on witty, scathing Blackadder being as “offensive” as possible. Monty Python’s Life of Brian was denounced as blasphemous by some and caused global uproar, but the Bethlehem script themes – Mary and Joseph, mangers and the like – sound mainstream enough.
Curtis also co-wrote Blackadder Goes Forth, set in the first world war trenches. Featuring soldiers going over the top in the final moments, it was rightly hailed as a poignant masterpiece. Odd that Curtis didn’t balk at that but did at airing what was effectively a ribbing of the nativity.
Be afraid. Christmas supermarket sandwiches are especially frightening this year. Tesco is offering a Yorkshire pudding wrap with gravy mayonnaise. Co-op is pushing a Festive Onion Bhaji. Multitudinous outlets are hawking pigs under blanket monstrosities that look too large for the human mouth to cope with. Pret A Manger has rammed an entire Christmas lunch into a sandwich. Waitrose has conjured a vegetarian entity that resembles centuries-old potpourri slammed between two slices of malted bread.
Must hardworking Britons face such extreme existential challenges when searching for something to eat at their work-stations on these darkening days? Year after year, entire departments of professionals work on yuletide sandwich ideas, and I’ve come to suspect many could be dangerous sociopaths. It’s a strange tic of British life: why do supermarkets think they have to assault our lunchtime tastebuds every Christmas? I’m keeping myself safe and gnawing on Marmite on toast until the threat passes in January.
Photograph by Alamy