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As The Exorist is shown this month on Sky Premier for the first time on British
television, Richard Arnold feels the force of a real-life exorcist Lionel Fanthorpe.
When The Exorcist first hit cinema screens, its young star Linda Blair gave the term 'she's a head-turner' a horrifying new meaning. With its gruesome special effects and chilling premise, this tale of a young girl possessed by a malevolent spirit had cinema audiences fainting in the aisles on its release in 1973.
Showing this month on Sky Premier for the first time on British television, The Exorcist was, until recently, believed by British censors to be too psychologically disturbing to be shown on the small screen, a fact that has only served to enhance the movie's controversial reputation. The Exorcist remains embedded in the mind of even the most sceptical cinemagoer. Sky film critic Barry Norman admits it remains the only film to date that raised hairs on the back of his neck after leaving the cinema.
"Our fascination with The Exorcist is that it epitomises the struggle between good and evil, and that the struggle can be inside any one of us," says Reverend Lionel Fanthorpe, a paranormal investigator who
has carried out his own exorcisms in his professional capacity as a man of the cloth.
"Of course, the film goes way beyond any exorcism or anything a 20th-century exorcist has seen. It was extremely entertaining - but what I find disturbing about the film is the way in which the power of evil seems to overflow. Good is having a very narrow victory."
Driving force
Even so, Fanthorpe himself has often been called to purify a home or meet individuals who believe themselves to be the focal point for some sinister force.
" I've always felt like a doctor who is called in to convince a patient that there really is nothing wrong with them," says Fanthorpe, who most recently was called to exorcise a possessed Ford Capri. "This guy believed that the car was, in some way, possessed by Aleister Crowley, the infamous black magician; Crowley identified with the number of the beast, 666, which happened to be the number plate of the car. I blessed some water from the tap, sprinkled it inside the car, said a few prayers of exorcism and the water
actually got hot - not hot enough to burn my fingers, but hot enough, like a cup of tea.
"On my way home on the train we were halted by a juddering crash. Vandals had tossed something on the line. I felt that if I had inconvenienced the evil spirit, it was going to do the same to me."
Superstitions aside, advances in thinking have spawned a generation of people now less inclined to believe in malevolent forces. But Fanthorpe says that these forces are still relevant to the modem world. "In the 20th century, the idea of being possessed by evil spirits has been used to explain mental illness, the negative power of the imagination and the possibility that evil forces exist," he says. "If Jesus believed these forces existed, then I'm not going to argue with my guv'nor. He's a lot cleverer than I am !"
