# March 7, 1973: The Exorcist Completes Filming

On March 7, 1973, director William Friedkin finally wrapped principal photography on what would become one of the most terrifying and influential horror films ever made: **The Exorcist**.

The production had been an absolute nightmare—quite literally. What was scheduled as an 85-day shoot had stretched to a grueling 224 days, with the budget ballooning from $4.2 million to over $12 million. But Friedkin, a perfectionist who had just won an Oscar for *The French Connection*, refused to compromise his vision of adapting William Peter Blatty's bestselling novel about a 12-year-old girl possessed by a demon.

The shoot was plagued by bizarre incidents that would later fuel rumors of a "cursed" production. Friedkin had deliberately refrigerated the MacNeil house set to freezing temperatures so the actors' breath would be visible, creating an atmosphere of supernatural cold. The crew worked in parkas while young Linda Blair, playing the possessed Regan, endured take after take in a thin nightgown. In one accident, Blair suffered a permanent spinal injury when a harness malfunctioned during a violent possession scene.

The famous "vomit" scene—where Regan projectile-vomits pea soup at Father Karras—required multiple takes because Friedkin wasn't satisfied with the trajectory. Poor Jason Miller (playing Karras) was hit in the face repeatedly with the concoction until the director got exactly the shot he wanted. Ellen Burstyn, playing Regan's mother Chris, was yanked so hard by a wire during one possession scene that she suffered permanent back damage and her scream of pain made it into the final film.

Friedkin's demanding methods extended to every aspect. He fired guns on set without warning to capture genuine shock reactions, slapped actors to get them properly agitated, and filmed the famous "spider-walk" scene (eventually cut from the theatrical release) that required Blair's contortionist double to perform the unnerving descent down the stairs.

When filming finally wrapped on this March day, the production had experienced several fires, injuries, and the death of actors Jack MacGowran and Vasiliki Maliaros (though their deaths occurred after production). Nine people connected with the film died during or shortly after production, leading a priest to actually perform an exorcism on the set at one point.

Despite—or perhaps because of—all the chaos, *The Exorcist* would premiere in December 1973 and become a cultural phenomenon. Audiences fainted, vomited, and fled theaters. It earned $441 million worldwide and became the first horror film nominated for Best Picture at the Academy Awards, receiving ten nominations total.

The film revolutionized horror cinema, proving that the genre could be artistically serious and commercially massive. It introduced sophisticated special effects, realistic performances, and genuine theological weight to demonic possession stories. Its influence echoes through every possession film since—from *The Omen* to *The Conjuring*.

When that exhausted, frost-bitten crew finally called "wrap" on March 7, 1973, they couldn't have known they'd just completed a film that would terrify generations and forever change what horror films could achieve.

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