A new cut of the classic horror movie “The Exorcist” premiered last night in three college towns — as Warner Bros. goes ahead with plans to put the flick in wider release.
The 1973 screamer, which depicts a priest’s efforts to exorcise the demons possessing a 12-year-old girl, got its fresh screenings in Athens, Ga., Austin, Texas, and Ann Arbor, Mich.
The revamped film will get wider release later this year — and moviegoers will get more than the thrill of seeing Exorcist star Linda Blair’s spinning head.
Twelve minutes of previously unseen footage have been restored — including a chilling scene in which Blair’s character, Regan, crawls down a stairway spider-style, back arched, stomach toward the ceiling, on her hands and feet.
A professional contortionist with a specially designed harness doubled for Blair in the scene.
The spider-walk sequence had appeared in the screenplay and the original William Peter Blatty novel on which the movie is based.
The original movie was a huge success with critics and at the box office.
But Blatty said that scaring movie-goers was not his original goal.
“When I wrote the novel and also when I wrote the screenplay, frightening people … was the furthest thing from my mind,” he told an Atlanta radio station yesterday. “I meant it as a supernatural detective story and a psychological thriller.”