32 Days of Halloween, Day 21: George C. Scott Twofer

Okay, so if you’re joining us now you might be wondering where the hell did Day 20 go? Well, Day 20 was a day of server outage horror that will live in infamy. I won’t bore you with details, but I discuss it over on my blog here and here. So to make up for lost time, we’re doing double features today.

So two movies tonight, and two small bits today: I’ve got a twofer of George C. Scott here.

First up, one of the creepiest damn movies I’ve ever seen: The Changeling. In it, Scott plays a man who loses his family. He rents a huge house and tries to recover as best he can, working and teaching, but he soon figures out that there’s a presence in the house. Trailer here:

Direct link for the feedreaders.

[ad#longpost]Great damn movie and criminally underviewed. If you haven’t seen it, I highly advise snagging it for Halloween. There’s still time.

Now for the second part of this twofer, is another criminally underappreciated film: Exorcist 3. Now at least this one makes sense: nobody liked Exorcist 2, and generally once a crap sequel comes out, any following chapters are considered null and void even before they’re released. Perfectly understandable. However, this is a rare exception. William Peter Blatty, author of the original novel (and the novel Legion upon which this film was based), also directed this. And I find it to be exceptionally creepy and a worthy sequel to the first.

It’s sad, though: I got to interview Blatty at one point and I asked him the question–when are you going to direct again? He said he couldn’t get a gig. If I remember correctly, the two films he was offered were a Civil War teenage ghost/love story that just weeks away from going into production and Pumpkinhead 4. Again, I’m going off of memory here, but it was two offers equally as debilitating. Very sad. If you haven’t seen this flick, though, I recommend it. Some great creepy moments on screen. And you’ve also got Brad Dourif kicking some ass too.

Direct link for the feedreaders.

• Click here to buy The Changeling on DVD from Amazon.
• Click here to buy The Exorcist 3 on DVD from Amazon.
• Click here to buy George C. Scott stuff from Amazon.