Film Trivia Fact Check: The Exorcist's cursed injury report

Claim: “An audience member who saw [The Exorcist] in 1974 during its original theatrical release fainted and broke her jaw on the seat in front of her. She then sued Warner Bros. and the filmmakers, claiming that the use of subliminal imagery in the film had caused her to pass out. The studio settled out of court for an undisclosed sum.” Source: IMDb

Rating: Inconclusive

Context: Far be it from us to deny The Exorcist yet another lawsuit, but this claim appears to have been made up. We looked through newspaper records, blogs, and documentaries, listened to interviews and audio commentaries, and found no mention of an unlucky audience member who fainted in their seat, broke their jaw on the chair in front of them, and attempted to sue WB. We’re not saying it didn’t happen, but it would be the rare time The New York Times didn’t do a story about the outrageous reaction to the film. The Exorcist is lousy with lawsuits and stories of its “cursed production.”

“Nine people died” during its year-long production, Ellen Burstyn says in Mark Kermode’s 1999 documentary, Fear Of God: 25 Years Of The Exorcist. There are explanations for that, too. “If you have a production that lasts two or three weeks, nothing happens,” says Max von Sydow in the documentary. “But if you have a production that lasts for a year or nine months, a lot of things have to happen, accidents or whatever.”

Though it’s difficult to tell if the rumor started on IMDb or Wikipedia, the latter went to greater lengths to confirm the factoid’s validity. First appearing on Wikipedia in 2006, the story later carried a citation leading back to IMDb until the post was quietly removed in 2008, along with other “utterly worthless and meaningless trivia,” as the Wiki editor so elegantly put it. But because it continued to hang out on IMDb, the story spread. It appeared in at least one college thesis (which cites Wikipedia), on several movie blogs, the content churn of the 2010s, and finally, as engagement bait on social media. Aside from the filmgoer’s pronouns, the verbiage remains mostly unchanged, and the two parties always settle out of court.

In its defense, the rumor sounds true. In 1974, The New York Times reported fainting spells, vomiting, and abrupt exits “before the film was half over.” They noted a security guard who told them that people had heart attacks: “One woman even had a miscarriage.” Even these stories don’t hold up to scrutiny. A follow-up report from The Times refutes the security guard’s claim, with a theater operator saying he had no knowledge of heart attacks but was aware of the vomiting and blackouts.

Horror movies have long employed medical risk as a marketing technique. Before schlockmeister William Castle shocked the seats of anxious Tingler viewers, theaters were staffed with nurses who offered “nerve tonic” to quell fears during the 1931 release of Dracula. Today, marketing departments still exploit folk stories of stomach-churning slashers. Terrifier 2 reportedly made viewers puke in their popcorn in 2022, and the hype helped make that micro-budget splatterfest a success, just as it did for The Exorcist in 1974.

In the preceding years, audience members told war stories of their battle with the devil, as the scars from moviegoing injuries of years past lingered with the aching memory of an ancient wound. So much so that in 1995, Tom Morris of Braintree, Massachusetts, sent a letter to Roger Ebert to finally get to the bottom of his reaction. Unfortunately for us, Tom did not receive a broken jaw—just some bloody shins. He writes:

“I recall a rumor that The Exorcist used subliminal messaging to affect the audience. When I saw it on its initial theatrical release, I passed out at one point—and I don’t faint easily. It was early in the film when she was having her brain X-rayed: The scene showed Regan with a needle in her neck, and there’s a gyrating X-ray machine and the machine-gunlike sound of sheets of film rapidly advancing. I recoil at the thought that a movie could have such an impact on me without some kind of unfair advantage. Maybe the hype surrounding the film and the crowded theater set me up for it. When I came to, I noticed that I’d slumped down and jammed my shins against the metal edge of the seat in front of me. They were cut and bleeding. Probably one of the few times that watching a movie led to physical injury.

Anecdotal cases of injury and illness didn’t make The Exorcist a target for litigation. It was simply dishonest business practices that did that. In addition to fainting spells, the movie was also a legal headache for Warner Bros. Many people sued over this picture.

Voice actor Ken Nordine took WB to court over failing to pay his salary, and for using his sound effects without compensation. The claim was settled out of court. “It is very substantial,” Nordine said. “I am pleased.” Meanwhile, director William Friedkin and writer William Peter Blatty sued the studio numerous times over credit, profits, and broadcast TV rights.

It’s possible that a moviegoer lost consciousness and broke their jaw during a screening, but if they did, it got no coverage. More likely, the claim is a swirl of the many other ghost stories about the film. Unsurprisingly, Friedkin had the most salient words to offer about the entire endeavor:

“There was a lot of stuff written about The Exorcist and behind the scenes of The Exorcist,” Friedkin says in the 2000 director’s commentary. “Almost everybody who wrote about it knew very little, if anything, about it.”

“A lot of incorrect information was passed on to the public and sort of added to the dark legend that the film contains to this day. I have to say that most of the stories that I saw, if not all of them, were completely made up out of whole cloth.”