As bad as Asag is, there is one demon who is an even better choice. In fact, in some ways, he is the best choice. Who? This guy:

His name is Berith. Now the interesting thing about that name, is that it is the biblical Hebrew word translated into English as covenant. This word is used in the Old Testament to describe the pact which Elohim, or…Elohim isn’t a name! Yahweh, a name that has been mispresented as Jehovah. His full name is usually given as Baal-Berith, Lord of the Covenant. He appears in the Gideon cycle in the Book of Judges. Following the death of Gideon, there was a period of religious apostasy. According to Judges 8:33, this took the form of the worship of the baalim, being the plural of baal, which is the word in the not-name Baal-Zebub, the Lord of Flies. The plural is used because the grand title of Baal is used in a construct state with other descriptive nouns…like Baal-Zebub. One such compound title is Baal-Berith. Another is El-Berith, which may be another designation for the Baal-Berith.

Now I know what you will say! I pointed out that some supposed demons are really deities, and therefore they are not demons. I agree. But there is something particularly fascinating about Baal-Berith that makes him the best choice for the demon in my movie…possession. Not…the Sacred Disease, and not Divine Madness. Oh, no! Demon possession! At least, according to this guy:

This is Sebastian Michaelis, and he was a prior of the Demonican order…sorry! The Dominican order. I have nothing against that order, but this guy was also an Inquisitor, meaning that he was involved in setting up innocent people to be tortured sadistically until they confessed to religious crimes. Then the Inquisitor had the opportunity of getting more thrills by drowning, stoning, or burning his victims to death. Oh that such men followed the example of the sons of God and just found consenting women to help them get their kicks. But no!  This fiend’s specialty was witches and demons. And he wrote a book about a nun named Madeleine, who had been diagnosed as suffering from demon-possession. So now we’re talking! A female person possessed by a demon…Regan and Madeleine, and two Catholic clerics.

The nun accused Father Louis Gaulfridy of seducing her, and the power he had to do this came from, you guessed it…Pazuzu! Wait! The devil himself. The cleric than made her into a witch, and then caused her to be possessed by demons. Yes…plural. Shades of Legion! We are many! And wow! Madeleine underwent an exorcism. In the course of the exorcism, Madeleine was pressed for the name of the principal demon that was afflicting her. And she, unlike Regan, did actually provide a name. That name was Baal-Berith. Then she proceeded to throw out the names of every demon she could think of, and offered the names of specific saints who could be called upon to help. So here we have a deity demoted to demon who actually possessed someone! And a female someone to boot! I should qualify that. Madeleine got caught doing naughty things, and the whole demon-possession deal is a clever way of pleading guilty to things that will get you tortured and burned to death, but actually dumping the blame on supernatural beings…who are the ones that are ultimately guilty. And if you get a pagan masquerading as a Christian Cleric, and one whose things are demons and witchcraft, you stand a pretty good chance of surviving the whole thing.

 So, it would seem that this guy is the best choice, although this presentation of him is a little less intimidating than the one presented earlier. Why the best? Because he has a history of possessing women, at least one woman, and fighting an exorcist attempting to drive him out. That leaves the Exorcist with the WORST possible choice for the specific demon involved in the possession, and me with what is arguable one of the best choices. That applies only if Pazuzu, whose trinket was found by Merrin, who also believed he saw an unhistorical statute appear momentarily in Regan’s room is actually presented by the movie as the source of what afflicts Regan. I have suggested elsewhere that in Merrin’s Final Contextualization, the appearance of Pazuzu may in fact be due his knowledge that Pazuzu is, in fact, a supernatural being that is the best choice for driving away a Horrid Lady who attacks, among others, children. Am I saying that Lamashtu is present in the Exorcist? Let me answer that this way…there is a very clear scene in the movie that suggests that this is the case. But first, check this out:

Is this cool or what! This is a Lamashtu plaque. You can see her in the lower center, where she carries snakes, and is breast-feeding the dog and pig…keep away! The pig is mine! It is used in apotropaic magic. That is a big word for magical rituals that seek to utilize the power of one spirit-entity to fight-off another spirit-entity. But notice the head at the top! That is none other than…you guessed it! The protector of babies and children…Pazuzu. He is there to fight against the Horrid Lady! He will drive her away. Big deal, right? Yes! Now check this out:

 
Merrin has said good-bye to his archaeologist friend, telling him that he had to leave because he had something he had to do. Walking down a small street, a horse-drawn carriage comes racing down the cross-street, and almost runs him over. And we get a good shot of who is in the carriage…this old woman. Thank goodness, or perhaps, thank Pazuzu, that Merrin gets out of the way just in time to not be killed by The Old Woman. Wow! It would be a strange thing if this old hag is some bizarre manifestation of Lamashtu…wouldn’t it. This is the shot that immediately precedes the one featuring the Horrid Old Lady:

 
Just before the carriage suddenly appears, this is the shot we see. Does this scene look at all familiar? It should:

 
Come on! We have the plaque and the wall. We have the two pieces on the end that point upward, we have a rather similar looking head, and we even see the two hands grasping the top of the plaque. I see no other explanation that the scene from the movie is a re-creation of a Lamashtu plaque. And what happens next? Merrin is saved from being killed by the woman in the carriage. Pazuzu has saved Merrin from Lamashtu. And if this is the case, then Pazuzu’s role in the movie is a positive one. In such a contextualization as this, Pazuzu is the best choice for a supernatural entity to feature in the movie. And that means that fans of the movie have been wrong about Pazuzu’s role since 1973.

The beauty of this is that another element in Father Merrin’s Final Contextualization makes total sense. And the beauty of that is the dramatic improvement over the otherwise inescapable conclusion that that element makes no sense whatsoever. I’m talking about a scene the precedes the one featuring Pazuzu looking down on Merrin just in time to keep him being obliterated by the Horrid Old Lady in the carriage. It is set in the office of Merrin’s archaeologist friend. We’ve been shown an eclectic mix of artifacts, and then Merrin picks up and gazes upon two specific items. Both had been found in the same stratum at the dig-site:

Evil against Evil? That is the declaration made by Merrin’s buddy. This is the shot that immediately precedes the Strange Declaration:

The St. Joseph medal. On the surface of it, Evil against Evil seems to be a very impious thing to say. And! There is no way that a St. Joseph medal was found at a dig-site with a Pazuzu amulet that could be as old as 600 B.C. Still, we might call Pazuzu evil, though I maintain that overall, he is, or was, not evil. The trinket the Old Priest found was used in rituals involving apotropaic magic. We call upon the presence of Pazuzu to protect us! Against whom? Given that his nemesis was Lamashtu, I would feel much better hiring Pazuzu as a baby-sitter than I would any other Neo-Assyrian apotropaic divine character. As far as Merrin goes, he found Pazuzu’s necklace! That’s a colorful over-statement, if the various Pazuzu-head trinkets that have been found actually hung from something other than a chain around the neck. But Merrin also saw the Impossible-to-be-Found-Where-It-Was-Found St. Joseph medal. Because the medal wasn’t found…it belonged to someone else. So now Merrin’s archaeologist friend is not referring to the St. Joseph medal as one-half of the Evil against Evil pronouncement. And so I make another suggestion that may, perhaps, fit my interpretation of the movie overall, and the true significance of the opening segment. Pazuzu may be described as evil, but we know that he, by pounding on the Horrid Lady Lamashtu with both his fists, intentionally, or simply as a result, protects children. You say I’m reaching…and that may be. But let’s assume, for a moment, that the Supposed Demon is actually the one who we know destroys children, i.e. the Horrid Lady Lamashtu. Then Pazuzu shows up, and given the fact that he arrives to attack the one who attacks Regan, then we might just be able to say:

Evil against Evil

Pazuzu against Lamashtu

Now I am not saying that there is a real demon in the story, and that her name is Lamashtu. I very much believe that there is no demon. But Merrin the Archaeologist would know the concepts around the Neo-Assyrian deity called Pazuzu, not to mention the concepts around Pazuzu’s favorite sparring partner, and therefore he would know about the potentially beneficial appearance of the Strange-Looking Guy in the event that a child was being attacked by a demon along the lines of Lamashtu. We don’t know exactly what demon Merrin thought was afflicting Regan. But I have said that the delusion that she was possessed by a demon was, in part, a way of coping with the Sexual Victimization she had experienced. This gave her power, and she made herself repulsive-looking, ensuring that the Horrible Things that Happened Up There would not be repeated. But that is trading one form of Hell for another. So, I would contextualize the

Evil against Evil

pronouncement as:

A Protective Force, regarded under other circumstances as evil, nonetheless fights against the evil that afflicts the child known as Regan…sexual abuse that is reflected in some appearances of The Face.

In a purely hypothetical way…a worse form of Something Lamashtu that is not, in fact, Lamashtu. Perhaps…Lamashtuian. Now I think that the strange declaration made by Merrin’s friend in the vision at the beginning of the film makes sense. Thus, Merrin’s perception of the sudden materialization of the Pazuzu statue, and Regan’s response to it, habitually regarded as the Pazuzu Demon causing some fake statue of himself to appear in Regan’s bedroom so she can writhe around in front of it for some silly reason or other, only to have it disappear a few moments later…that’s wrong! She symbolically welcomes a force that Merrin knows can be a potentially beneficial one. Wait…I’m wrong? Because I have completely flipped around the meaning of my favorite Regan the Rock Star scene from what everyone else thinks it is? That’s crazy? I sure hope so. But I will attempt to out crazy myself even more.
I think that I can make sense out of another scene that occurs in Merrin’s vision if it, though appearing at the beginning of the movie, actually appears at the end of the movie. I have discussed two dogs in other postings on this website. One is Regan’s drawing of the Flyer. The other is the fierce, black dog that rushes in to save Karras’s mother from Karras himself. Here is another dog:

 Wait a minute. That little dog is irrelevant. I was actually thinking about these dogs:

Yes, a canine disagreement about something. After being shown the ridiculous Pazuzu statue, the one which doesn’t necessitate him buying a Corvette, we see the two dogs fighting. Why? Actually, the answer is clear when it is pointed out that there is really a third dog:

 
This third dog appears for only a moment. He is not involved in the fight, he appears to be watching, or observing. The explanation of this scene would appear to be clear. What else comes in threes? Wow, you guessed it!

1. Regan
2. Father Merrin
3. Father Karras

These are the three characters in the Great Movie-Ending Exorcism. And! We know that the bigwigs relegated Karras to the role of an assisting psychiatrist- priest. So Merrin, believing that Regan is being attacked by something evil…Pazuzu? I say…no! If Merrin were an archaeologist working a site at ancient Nineveh, then he would know that Pazuzu is key to fighting off the one who really attacks children. The dogs…they are part of Merrin’s vision at the end of the movie. Put this way, the scene with the 3 dogs makes complete sense.

There are points of connection between Merrin’s Vision at the beginning of the film and the events associated with the exorcism. First:

Merrin and his pills from the scene set in the little café. Now:

And I would also point out that Merrin is taking his pills in the spare bathroom that is just down the hall from Regan’s room, rather than the bathroom in Regan’s room. I will discuss that shortly. But we also have this:

Merrin washes down his pills in the little café. So this must be obvious:

 The waiter in the little café. Waiters serve drinks.

This guy is walking around, also serving drinks. But waiters aren’t the only ones who serve drinks:

That’s right, waitresses serve them too. This starts out as hot tea, but then it is decided that it needs a little something extra:

Would you like some Brandy in your tea? Merrin says…yes. The drink in the little glass from which Merrin is drinking in the little café is most likely an alcoholic drink as well. It is probably crazy to see anything here, but this association of liquid with Merrin reaches its apex with this scene:

Well, we know that it is a bottle of Holy Water, but the connection between Merrin and Strangely Relevant Liquids is a fascinating one. The bottle is very much at the very front of the shot, making it the thing that your eye goes to first, giving it considerable importance.

How about this:

 
Praying is a very sensible thing to do before an exorcism. How about another prayer scene? Yes, from the beginning of the movie…Muslim men praying. And this:

A cool shot that I can’t show enough. And of course, Regan’s eyes rolled back in her head in The Sow is Mine! Scene. But what about the beginning of the movie?

A remarkable coincidence, I’d say.

Now it is time for Merrin’s Last Stand, as it were. In this scene, we see him arrive. And at this point I will show clearly just how crazy I am. But I would like to restate some observations I made elsewhere. One of the things that strikes me about Merrin is the fact that he showed up completely unprepared.

He’s brought his priest bag. 
 

But, meeting Father Karras, we find out that he failed to bring five items that I thought he would have brought with him, and indeed, would have been present in his priest bag:

1. Cassock
2. Purple stole
3. Holy Water
4. A surplice
5. Karras’s copy of the Roman ritual; the large one

It’s not as though these are odd, rare things. In fact, it’s a good thing that Merrin’s head is screwed on or Karras would have to go get one of those as well for Father-I-Didn’t-Bring-Even-the-Basic-Things-with-Me. Merrin has been brought in by the bishop because he has done an exorcism before. So, he would know exactly what was needed. Yet he has none of these things. He didn’t even bring the book with him. When he asks Karras to get a copy of the Exorcism 101 book he left at home, he actually asks for Karras’s copy. Why? We know that Karras, during the exorcism, has a copy of the ritual because he reads the responses from it. This would mean that, if Karras gave his copy of the book to Merrin, then Karras would have to scrounge up another copy for himself. So why doesn’t Merrin simply ask Karras to get him a copy, rather than ask him to go get Karras’s own copy. And along these same lines, it would seem to presuppose that Karras didn’t bring his copy. That would suggest that Karras wasn’t prepared either.

Another strange thing is the fact that Merrin appears to have no real interest in Regan’s case. Karras betrays, yet again, that he believes that Regan is mentally disturbed, though for the first time reveals his belief that Regan is suffering from Dissociative Personality Disorder, and that he has determined that there are at least three personalities. I feel it safe to maintain that he reached this conclusion by listening to the taped message that Regan and Chris made for Regan’s father. When Merrin is asked if he wanted to hear the background of the case, he says:

Why?

When Karras tells him that Regan is manifesting at least three personalities, before he can finish, Merrin cuts him off and says..

There is only one.

This attitude is not consistent with the ritual of exorcism, I quote:

But necessary questions are, for example: the number and name of the spirits inhabiting the patient, the time when they
entered into him, the cause thereof, and the like.
 

I believe that this information, which the exorcist is required to obtain, is basically what Karras was about to provide Merrin with, yet the latter shows no interest. And for someone with experience performing an exorcism, he has overlooked a very important requirement:

While performing the exorcism over a woman, he ought always to have assisting him several women of good repute, who will hold on to the person when she is harassed by the evil spirit.
 

If Merrin was keeping to the proper procedure, there should have been women present. Three were available: Chris, Sharon, and Willie. Yet no effort was made to include them. The only thing that Merrin appears to be interested in is Karras drumming up all the doo-dads that Merrin himself failed to bring in his, apparently empty, priest bag, and Regan’s middle name. It would appear on the surface that Merrin wasn't really necessary at all. I might indulge in a little speculation on this point. We know that two priests are necessary; the one who reads must of the ritual, and one who reads the responses. When the bishop asked Karras if he wanted to perform the exorcism, Karras said very clearly that he did. If we assume that Merrin was never brought up by the bishop, who then approved Karras’s request, it would follow that another priest would have to be selected. Who would Karras suggest? What priest was his good friend? And what priest was hanging around on the night of the exorcism, and indeed, so closely that when Karras threw himself out of Regan’s window, and he tumbled down the stone stairway, the Friend Priest was immediately there to perform the Last Rites for Karras? Yes…Father Dyer. Had Merrin not been suggested, and Karras could pick his assistant, I think it’s a safe bet that he would have chosen Dyer. I have commented elsewhere that Karras had brought a medication to inject into Regan. He also tried to strangle her, and then made a second attempt to strangle Regan, cut short only by his decision to commit suicide. As insane, though not possessed, as I am, a possible motive for the desire to kill Regan could be suggested by the role of Father Dyer, who I think was the target of Regan’s death threat during the after-party as Dyer placed the piano:

You’re going to die Up There.

The after-party broke up after Regan urinated on the floor, and Chris put her in the bathtub. Yet someone entered the attic, which we know because of the flickering of the hall lights, and the sudden screaming of Regan and violent convulsions on the bed. Regan came very close to telling the truth, and as she will state in The Sow is Mine scene, her abuser had threatened to kill her. If she were believed to be willing to name the person who was afflicting her, then that person would have a motive to kill her. Karras brought medication with him? Yes, he did. Merrin walked in and asked if Karras had anything he could give Regan for her impending heart disaster, the answer was…yes! But Karras said that he couldn’t give it to her, since she would lapse into a comma. This half-baked excuse would explain why he didn’t give her the medication that was, at that time, now sitting on Regan’s little desk, since whatever it was would have been something that would kill her. With Merrin as a witness, giving her this drug and Regan subsequently dying, Karras would not have as good a chance of getting away in the event of the girl’s death.

Merrin asked Karras an odd question:
 

Are you very tired?

Merrin has just met Karras, and then immediately asks Karras if he is “very tired.” Well, yes, Father Merrin, I stayed up all night partying! So I am very tired. It seems to me that this question may have been an attempt to find a way to exclude Karras from the exorcism. And having forgotten all your Religious Stuff was a good way of getting Karras out of the house. So, I have two concerns with Father Merrin:

1. He claims to have been totally unprepared
2. He seems to have no interest in the actual situation, even though the ritual requires an attempt to obtain key information

There is more observation that can be made. Merrin has never met Karras before. This would make it unlikely that Merrin knew about the death of Karras’s mother. And it would certainly have precluded any knowledge on Merrin’s part that the issue of the death of Karras’s mother had so unhinged him that he hears Regan speaking in his mother’s voice, and will even go so far as to scream, “you’re not my mother!” Yet this bizarre sub-plot unfolding before him doesn’t seem to elicit any surprise on Merrin’s part; almost as if it wasn’t happening at all.

One last scene before moving on to Regan’s bathroom door:

Merrin first arrives. This shot sure does make Merrin look a little like a black bird:

Where was I? Oh, yes…Regan’s bathroom door. At the beginning of the ritual, the bathroom door is shut:

And:

Regan gets her characteristic greenish, bile-vomit on Father Merrin’s stole. Karras goes to rinse it, and so he goes into Regan’s bathroom:

So now the door is open, and we can see the shower curtain:

So now the bathroom door, which had been closed and which Karras left open, slams shut:

But it has slammed shut with such force that the door cracks. Supernatural?  We know that interior doors are often not very thick, so it wouldn’t take much of a push to cause it to do this. And what immediately preceeded the slamming and breaking of the door?

That’s the ceiling, obviously. If the Supposed Demon did this, could do this, why can it still not get out of the restraints? Too vulgar a display of power? But the little drawer trick wasn’t? If something were wrong with the drawer of the desk and if you bumped the wall just right, it might just slide open.
 

Do it again.
In time.
No, now.
In time.
 

And so our Supposed Demon wasn’t able to do the drawer trick again. Why? Well, the first time, Karras wasn’t watching. But if Regan did it again, Karras would be watching intently. So we get a silly promise that she will do the drawer trick at a later time…yes, once again, deflecting and diverting attention away from the matter at hand. If you claimed that Karras’s dead mother was inside you, as Regan did, and that you would pass on a message to her if Karras so wished, but you couldn’t tell Karass what his mother’s maiden name was, you vomit in his face. Sleight of hand? Sleight of stomach? Those watching the movie are so grossed out that they utterly fail to recognize the significance of Regan not being able to answer a question she should be able to answer if her earlier claim were true. So too does the movie-goer miss the fact that Regan can’t speak Latin or French. It is also that we don’t realize that during the exorcism all the medical stuff is still present, and that Regan still can’t get out of the straps, until they break, which doesn’t need a supernatural explanation at all. So she has the power to slam the bathroom door shut so hard that it almost breaks apart, and can cause a sudden crack in the ceiling, yet still pulls helplessly at her restraints?
 
I have written at length about the importance of the attic…the Up There. So if someone were up there during the exorcism, they could suddenly arrange a vulgar display of power by pulling away prt of the attic flooring and stamping down on the ceiling of Regan’s room, thereby creating a supernatural event that doesn’t need to be supernatural at all. And I think that the violent slamming of the bathroom door may have a more mundane, and less demonic, cause.

Still, we are, at any rate, back to Regan’s bathroom door being well shut. It started out closed. Then Karras opened it to go into the bathroom and rinse out Merrin’s purple stole, which we know isn’t really Merrin’s purple stole, since he forgot his. Following this, the door was slammed shut, or kicked shut, so hard that the surface cracked from top to bottom. What happens now? Both leave the room. Perhaps it was Karras who should have asked Father Merrin if he was very tired? As Merrin retreats to the bathroom, and not Regan’s bathroom, but rather the spare bathroom next to Regan’s room, he takes his pills:
 

Merrin retreats to the bathroom to take one his pills:

It’s a pretty nice bathroom! Karras re-enters Regan’s room…alone
 

The next shot involving Karras is this:

I have said elsewhere that this is a hallucination, and not the Supposed Demon manifesting itself as Mother Karras. Now it gets interesting, as if it wasn’t already! Observe the angle. We’ve learned that there are three doors in Regan’s room. One is the bathroom door. We know that there are two doors on the opposite wall. Walking toward that wall, while inside Regan’s room, the door through which you come and go is the one on the right. The one on the left must be a closet door. So if Karras re-entered Regan’s room, then there is a spatial problem. What is that? He would have entered at the top right, the closet door, which is on the same wall, is clearly visible. We know that if you are standing in Regan’s room, and look at the bed, the door to the bathroom, which is now damaged, is to the left. And therein lies the very interesting something. Based on what is certainly known about Regan’s room, this camera shot, following Karras re-entering the room, is IMPOSSIBLE if this hallucination is seen immediately upon Karras’s re-entry into Regan’s room. To see this scene in accordance with the dynamics of the room, you would have to be standing over by the windows on the opposite side of the room.

The above shot shows Karras walking around the bed until we see the door behind him. That means that after entering the room, he then walked around the bed to the window, or the bathroom. He then is standing in the right position to have his hallucination in a way that matches the camera angle. He then walks back around to the other side of the bed. It’s just me, I know, but why did Karras take this walk? I’ll continue his trek:

 And:

There is something very important as to the situation involving Karass’s state of mind in this scene. Well, yes, he’s clearly hallucinating. But if you listen very carefully, you will hear some odd groaning. This groaning is very different than the deep-sounding groaning and growling that Regan has been making. And as Karras walks around the bed, staring at his mother, one can make out, from within this groaning, two words:
 

Why?  Why?
 

These words sound as if they are floating around in the air. He continues his walk around the bed. We then see:

But once he arrives on the other side of the bed, he sits down beside Regan, and we see:

Yes! The little bag that Karras may have carried around in his bigger Priest Bag. Merrin had one too, but it was seemingly empty. But Karras’s wasn’t! So:

Oops, that’s not right!

I suppose that’s closer.

Even better…all the stars in the sky for you! Perhaps the vial that Karras pulled out of his Felixian Bag was full of stars too.
Then Karras wipes the sweat from Regan’s forehead.  Now he hears Regan:

Dami, why you do this to me? Please Dami, I’m afraid.

You’re not my mother.

Dami…please.

 

 
Yes…Merrin suddenly barges in, only to be told by Karras that there is a problem with Regan’s heart. Yes I have something I could give her, but she will lapse into a comma. And we know that Chris was under the idea that Regan might just die because of the exorcism. That is rather odd.

Finally! Yes, finally! Regan speaks a foreign language that there is no way she could have been able to speak…modern Greek! And not just two expessions or five words, and she doesn’t do it backwards. But it’s a bit late for that, and she isn’t doing it all. Karras’s psychosis is almost at the intolerable point.

 
Get out!

Karras leaves, then Merrin walks around to the left side of the bed.

Yes, the bathroom door, that had slammed shut so hard that it cracked down the front surface, is now open! So who opened it? We know that after Karras entered the bedroom without Merrin being present, he walked around to the left side of the bed…where the bathroom is. And now, the bathroom door is open again. But notice that it isn’t open all the way.

 
Another shot of the door. It had been closed, Karras enters the room alone, and then is told by Merrin to leave. The bathroom door is now partly open, and Merrin is alone with Regan, or is he? Still, it is important to note that Regan, having broke free of the straps, but was then bound at the wrists, is now restrained to the bed again:
 

 
So now we have a very interesting camera angle:

If we were the camera man, we would be standing right in front of the bathroom door. That’s obvious. But it also leaves us standing right behind Merrin.

Karras re-enters, finds Merrin seemingly dead, and then attacks Regan:

Ah, yes, the door, which had been only partially open when Merrin entered, went over to the right side of Regan’s bed, kneeled down and began to pray, is now completely open. The fascinating thing is that there are no intervening happenings to explain why. So if you had been hiding in the bathroom, then you could kick the bathroom door closed so hard that it cracked. Doing that, of course, after the person in the attic arranged the cracking of the ceiling. And if you were in the bathroom, although at some point you may have been in the closet, and Merrin kneeled down with his back to the bathroom door, you could throw it open and attack him from behind. But that’s absurd. Except, Karras finds more than Merrin lying on the floor. He finds this:

This is more than just a really cool shot. Moments ago, Regan was restrained to the bed. But not now! So Merrin, alone in the room, walks around the bed toward the bathroom, and we find the bathroom door inexplicably open. Just a bit. Regan is restrained to the bed. We get a nice camera shot directly behind Merrin. Then! We find Father Forgetful lying unconscious on his back on the floor, and the bathroom door completely open. And someone has let Regan out of her straps….she wants no straps! Yes, I think someone has freed Regan. And the look on her face…it’s just my opinion, but I get the feeling that she’s shocked…dismayed even. Perhaps she had no idea that whatever happened, was going to happen.

In the Great Vision of Father Merrin, the one we find at the beginning of the movie, there are several shots like this one:

Metal workers at work. We see open pits, and metal is being heated and pounded into shape. The significance of these scenes is puzzling. Perhaps. What is the symbolism? The fires are symbolic of sending a demon back to Hell? Please. Is the symbolism in the things they are making? We never get to see what it is they’re making. But as you listen, what you will hear is unmistakable…pounding; a very loud pounding. Not unlike the pounding you might metaphorically feel in your, I’m sure just fine, head…if you got clobbered, that is.

Back to the beginning! The clock has stopped:

And so it is that something has come to an end. Something very important. In other words, it’s time, Father Merrin…it’s time. 

For all my criticisms of Father Merrin, I too am sad to see him go.

 
Indeed, something very important. Something more important than anything else.

I suppose that my clock will stop too…hopefully not for a long time. I would feel rather blessed if, in my time of dying, I heard a voice saying, “I wish you didn’t have to go.” Still, I know that, like Father Merrin, I will have to go nonetheless. It comes to all of us…eventually. Then there is something we have to do; somewhere we have to go; someone we have to see. Father Merrin’s Last Stand! Perhaps he was the only one who could lead Regan back to where she needed to be. And so I must say, “goodbye Father Merrin.” You fought the good fight, and you will be missed.