The title of this essay series is…The Shadow Among Us, and as is clear from the top of the page, this episode is called…Shimmer. Now I must say that different assessments of Chris MacNeil appear on this website, and I must say that, to a certain extent, they are all wrong. I fooled myself about almost all of the people in the film. And as a person who endeavors to be right, being wrong is the next best thing. Well, almost wrong is a little better, though I must admit that I prefer, of all things…wrong but slowly becoming right. As Chris is concerned, I feel a bit ashamed of having been so wrong and so vocal about it at the same time. I will make a feeble attempt to right my wrong in this essay series. Now you could have someone bring the demon out of you, it is much more difficult to swap out prepositions and accomplish something altogether different…

 …a movie queen to play the scene of bringing all the good things out in me.

 And that is something very hard to do indeed. In my case, nigh impossible. And that’s a movie I would see over and over again, assuming that I have the supporting role. The truly surprising thing is that, deconstructing my own ill-conceived deconstruction that stopped just short of destruction, I suddenly realized that the movie is full of heroes…flawed heroes, but Ultimately Nobel People in abundance. You may point out that such a view is not that voiced by more than 40 years of commentators of all shapes, sizes, lack of creativity, etc…I suppose that there are a few people in the world who could tell how much I care about such a pointing out. Perceiving things is hard, which is why most people never really make an attempt to even try very much. If perceiving is hard, so much more is perception. Surely it is a crazy person who questions their state of perceiving things, but crazy people are more interesting than those who couldn’t perceive a Hellish Demon if it popped out of their metaphorical Ouija board and bit them on the cheek. True perception lies in the spaces in between.

In the essay titled The Falling Sickness, Episode 1, Beginnings, I found an important clue that, if noticed, and all the colors of Regan’s nightdresses were put right, a fundamental shift of Kiddo’s Chronology would take place. Sure, only 24 hours, you say. But a lot can happen in 24 hours, and if you pull at enough threads, the whole nightdress could start to unravel. Or is that a tapestry? Still, it well illustrates the fact that things are not always in order, and when Not-In-Order-Things are found, you can be sure that they involve important clues. At the risk of congratulating myself, I found a mouthful of very valuable clues that, if I have deconstructed them correctly and reconstructied them without wreaking deconstruction through the middle of them, they lead to a most interesting explanation of the origin of a very important element of the story. I think, if I may be so bold, that the story so fundamentally changes, that a whole new story must needs come to light. It would be a demonic thing indeed to ruin the perceptions of 40 years of theories and interpretations. Won’t this be fun!

One of the most enduring images from the movie is…

That was a bit of a trick, and I am sorry if that made you jump out of your seat. Well, not really. His appearance appears in an apparently straightforward appearance of the apparently easy context that, from very early on, appears to be easy to understand…

…The Face, who is usually identified as Captain Howdy and/or Pazuzu. Based on the writings on this website, Pazuzu is simply…out. I will not bore myself with another discussion of who, and what, the little brother of Humbaba is…or, was. Captain Howdy? He is named only twice in the movie, and is dropped like a hot demon following his final mention. Who was he? I’ve made my opinion well-known on this website. Regan’s papa was known for sailing, making him a captain. His name was Howard, easily turned into…Howdy. In the novel, Chris suspects that Captain Howdy is based on Regan’s father. We know Captain Howdy was involved in giving answers to Regan when playing with a harmless boardgame…sorry! I mean…playing with the very portal leading to Hellish Things. How relieved I was to learn that Regan didn’t have a Magic 8-Ball! Or Scrabble…THAT would spell certain demon-possession. The fact is that so many million-zillion Ouija boards have been sold…the one made by Parker Brothers being quite popular…that if indeed they posed a severe religious threat, the entire planet should be overrun with Pazuzus. There would be millions of exorcisms every year! I heard that there were two exorcisms performed on people living down the street from me. A couple others were discovered to be rock music fans as well as Ouijaists, so more exorcisms are in the offing. I would, if I were so inclined, it therefore being a good thing that I’m not, to pose a very interesting question to the million-zillions out there who will tell you they believe in demons…perhaps a million-zillion demons…where are they? I’ve yet to see one…well, except for the one who dwells inside me…Father Merrin is more than welcome at my house. He could bring the demon out of me. If I were really blessed, he would be followed by a movie queen to play the scene in bringing the good things out in me. Still, Father Merrin, and my anonymous movie queen, would have a more-than-difficult time. I quoted song lyrics in The Falling Sickness, Beginnings. Those lyrics didn’t make a statement…they actually posed a question…do my demons ever let me go? When I try, do they hide deep inside…is it someone that I know? Yes; they hide deep inside my metaphorical attic no matter how hard I try, and to answer the question…yes, it is someone that I know.

I firmly believe that this is Captain Howdy…

See what I did there? You thought I was gonna show you The Face again! Big Orange Bird Guy is introduced in relation to the Ouija board…

He isn’t your typical Piece of Reganite Artwork. He does seem a bit odd looking.

There he is, to your left! He’s a new creation, so he still needs to dry. And Chris will bear a grudge against Big Orange Bird Guy because he doesn’t think she’s pretty! Well, beauty is in the eye of beholder, as it were. He will have a less noticed appearance in this shot…

There he is…front and center…keeping a close eye on Father Karras. So why is he there? Perhaps for the same reasons that the Green Speckled Trio have migrated from the back of Regan’s workshop, and now stand at the very front. I discussed the reason for this an episode of my The Dreams of Avarice essay. I would suspect that he ended up where he did as the result of the same thing. To find some things, you must move other things out of the way. Now I have, on divers occasions, made it clear that the model for Captain Howdy is this…

And there he is…the First Captain Howdy! Captain Howdy Mock One! The Great Progenitor of Captain Howdies everywhere. He is a logo on the Attic Bird Box. This box contained something valuable…somethings valuable; things that Regan found and a certain someone wanted. Who cares about a box? Really! Who cares about the color of a nightdress! Captain Howdy was much maligned by Chris, who was metaphorically soothing her bruised ego when obsessing over Captain Howdy’s negative appraisal of her physical appearance. It happened during the hypnosis session…

Is there someone inside you?
Sometimes.
Who is it?
I dunno.
Is it Captain Howdy?
I dunno.

 Your honor I object!

And who are you?

Oh, I see. On what basis do you object?

And I also object to leading Regan! Still, the psychologist leads, but Regan refuses to follow. Good for her! So why do we ask about Captain Howdy? How could the psychologist know about him? The only answer…Chris told him. But what did she tell him? What did she think the Dear Captain really was? I dunno for sure, but I think we can get to the answer.

But first I want to make it clear that now I will say upfront that I am in no way casting dispersions at the strange psychologists who practice…mesmerism, also known as…animal magnetism, although a more contemporary term would be…hypnotism. Franz Anton Mesmer popularized his animal-magnetistic hypnosis…

…which he, as it just so happens, appears to have used to mesmerize buxom women he found attractive. Go figure. He sought to harness that invisible force that existed in all living things…humans, animals, and vegetables. So…

You are getting sleepy…

I found lots of evidence justifying a healthy respect for hypnosis…

And it would seem that hypnosis can help a person immensely. It can cure you of inferiority complex and timidity…

And, or so it would seem, you can hypnotize someone over the phone…for a startling low price. Don’t be frustrated with pesky human verbal communication…

And I have good news for all you ladies who aren’t reading my annoying essays which come at a startling low price…free! I learned that you don’t need to go on a diet or spend any time in the gym…

 …although it looks to me like these gals are praying to be slim…good luck girls. However, being hypnotized to look hotter does seem like a lot of work. What you should do is hypnotize your husband…

No diet, exercise, or praying. And if your hairdryer broke down, hypnosis can help with that too…

I was surprised to find out that hypnosis can be something very dangerous. It can make you…

Insane. And one must be careful when agreeing to hypnosis. Make sure you don’t fall victim to…

…an amateur. I’m sure Mr. Hellava Squeeze psychologist in The Exorcist was no amateur. To avoid making such a mistake, try…

You might just hypnotize yourself into looking a little less goofy. You could find yourself…

…hypnotized by a UFO cult. That’s pretty scary. But it’s nothing compared to…

…being hypnotized and brought back as the She-Creature. And I’m glad that Hell was mentioned. Why? Because there would seem to be some intellectual disagreement as to whether hypnosis is theologically…

Good, with angels a plenty…or from somewhere else…

…altogether. Satan is an interesting guy, or gal, or even transvestite…there’s some disagreement. And he can do everything, including…

Perform hypnotism dressed like stage magician.
Animal Magnetism isn’t Animal Magnetism unless, besides vegetables, you can also…

…hypnotize, or be hypnotized by, your cow. A sure way to ensure that your victim…I mean…subject, is actually hypnotized is to…

…inflict terrible burns on him. Why be stuck with…

…a cliché pocket watch when there are so many devices to improve your animal magnetitic skills…

Meet the…

The lowest price ever! Of course, there are less expensive devices that you could use. If you had a Trance-Fer Chart, you could hypnotize people…

…without them know it, assuming you used a common household cooking ingredient. She kinda looks like a math teacher I once had…except up top.

You could use a television set…

I don’t suppose a man drew that picture. Elton’s will refund your money if she…I mean, it… doesn’t work. If TVs work, then it only makes sense that…

Along the same lines, there is the…

…super-duper Hypnodisc! Be sure you buy Van Loewe’s version. And it comes as no surprise that…

…you could use a crystal ball. You could also use the ever popular…

…Hypno-Coin. For $1.00! What do you have to lose? You could also use…

…a tuning fork. Of course, the cheapest hypnosis device is a…

…a Hypno-pencil balanced on the nose of your subject while you, for disturbing reason, wear a butcher’s apron. But! All those things are well-and-good, even the Vegetable Magnetism. Still, as all things in life tend to be adapted for a particular usage, so too hypnosis…

…will get you laid. But, really parents, be mindful of what your children read. Hypnosis clearly posed very real dangers in the soft-porn world of the early Wonder Woman comics…

If your children learn Blue-Ray Hypnosis they weel go around tying up girls and making them their preesoners! Parents, do not forget zis!

And do you owe me your thanks! I offer you something far more wholesome…

I just wanted to make my respect for hypnosis perfectly cleeeer! But what about the Hypnotist and Captain Howdy?

At this point, I will pose another question! When Chris told the psychologist about Captain Howdy, did she tell him that Howdy was a demon? I doubt the psychologist would have consented to a hypnosis session on the basis of attempting to badger a Malevolent Spirit-Entity. It’s not like he works for the Barringer Clinic and Foundation! But if not a demon…then who? I will answer that question in due course.

The Face appears in quick succession to Regan’s eye-opening during the first visit to the doctor…

I took the position in an earlier essay that Regan’s eyes open because the EKG machine soon began to spike. Surely the vision of a demon would do that? It probably would. But I can think of something that would do that a whole lot better. And I will admit that I have always believed that The Face appears a total of 5 times in the movie. But then I suddenly found that he appears an additional time, one that I had really noticed before now. Now I’m not very well at math, and have never been able to do my additions good, so I asked my friends to help me determine how many times The Face appears in my new reckoning…

it does seem strange that of the 6 certain appearances of The Face, the only one that could even remotely be attributed to Regan is the first. Karras sees The Face, in my reckoning,  2 times. Only those watching the movie see the strangest of all appearances, which I have dubbed…the Strangest of All Appearances. Then there is the appearance in the So-Called Dream of Karras. Actually, as I will badger…I mean…argue below, The Face appears twice in the Dream + Visions Scene. It is my belief that the complex sequence of images in that scene features images associated with…two persons? Karras and Merrin? And I was content with counting 1, then 2. Then I learned that there were other numbers after 2!

So now I believe that images associated with 4 people are present in that sequence. And the brief, momentary, flash of Mr. The Face is an image related to a character in the film who is not Regan.

It is easy to not notice how unlike The Face and Regan really are. In the first appearance…

…there is some blackening around the eyes, and an awful lot of white face make-up that might remind one of…

Or…

Isn’t there just something creepy about clowns? Or even…

Regan wants a cheeseburger and chocolate shake. Take my advice…get it for her. Yes! The Face has a clownish, white-painted face.

One of Possessed Regan’s enduring, thought not endearing, features is the greenish-yellowish eyes clearly demonstrating the characteristic known as…miosis…the opposite of dilated pupils.

 That said, it would be interesting to compare…

The eyes of these two Most Mysterious Entities are not the same. In the second, which I will badger is the second and third appearance of The Face…

…the eyes are similar to The Face in his first appearance. He still has some of the blackening around the eyes as seen in his debut. But again, the eyes are different than Regan’s eyes. Now for the appearance which originally I believed was the silliest shot in the movie. I do not think that anymore…

He seems to appear in the hood over the stove. I was sure of that until I became less sure. The hood of the stove is simply there. Does Chris see him? No. Who does? We do. I believe that The Face was added to this scene to give us a very important clue.

There can be no doubt that Merrin does not see The Face during the exorcism, but Karras does…

Throughout the exorcism, strange doings are shown with father Merrin clearly not seeing what Karras, through such shots as this one, clearly sees. The Face here is different from other appearances. The blackening around the eyes is much more intense and the tongue hangs out. So this is not the same portrayal of The Face seen earlier in the film. I’m still trying to figure out the significance of the tongue. Then there’s…

This more than anything shows the difference in the eyes…Regan’s left eye vs. Regan’s right eye, which is actually the eye of The Face.

Karras’s mother, in Damien’s most intense hallucination, becomes very much like The Face. The face has the almost white clown make-up, and the skin around the eyes is very dark. And the darkness around the eyes of The Face is generally not present with Regan except in some shots, the most notable being…

…something which Karras sees, but Merrin does not. The one thing Regan and The Face have is in common is the ugly teeth. And if The Face is the Demon That Troubles Regan, why is there only one possible occurrence of The Face that one could attribute to Regan? Actually, the origin of The Face becomes clear from the following scenes. I start with the first scene that we see Going-Over-The-Deep-End-Regan…

Forget about the eyes. And forget about the nightdress, which is, or so I think, the prettiest nightdress she has in the whole movie. Much prettier than…

…Chris’s ugly nightgown. In the previous shot, one should notice the beautiful, perfectly aligned teeth that couldn’t be any whiter unless she drank a bottle of correction fluid. Her teeth have been capped, either with crowns or veneers. It is worth keeping in mind that in today’s terms, crowns or porcelain veneers can run $800, to more than $3,000 per tooth. That is what I would pay if I could afford it and wasn’t scared to death of going to the dentist. I’m sure than actors, movie queens, models, etc. may well pay that much for their crowns or veneers. Five good porcelain veneers would cost me up to $15,000. And seeing how I discovered that I have a sixth tooth…that’s $18,000. I can’t price that in terms of 1973, though I believe that Linda Blair, or her parents, could probably show you a bill that would rival the mortgage on your home! Well, I exaggerate. But I suspect that more people today who aren’t actors, movie queens, models, etc. get this type of cosmetic dental work than in 1973, suggesting that in real money terms, the forms of capping available then cost even more money. So we have…

 Perfect Teeth Regan in the Sow is Mine Scene. But not for long…

So what a difference a few second makes in the world of teeth! Granted, these aren’t The Face teeth, but the absolutely perfect, white teeth are dingy with a terrible yellow-greenish appearance, are no longer aligned, and do not show the My-Teeth-Are-Capped-In-A-Great-Exercise-Of-Cosmetic-Dentistry-That-Costed-A-Fortune appearance that they did a moment ago. They also show a strange wearing pattern, only increasing just how yucky they look. Now a few seconds, not to mention a few inappropriate words, later…her teeth change again…

They aren’t quite the same as before, unless you count…before before. The alignment of the bottom row of teeth, and the strange ability of Regan’s teeth to return back to their snow-white-appearance, have me not only refusing to smile for the rest of life in case someone sees my six teeth, but extremely confused.

No more The Face-like teeth for kiddo.

And another view of the teeth that now has me refusing to smile ever again…

So we kinda ran the Tooth Gamut, as it were. It will be worth doing it again. During the hypnosis scene, Regan spends a good amount of time mumbling, so we don’t get a good look at her teeth. Why? I dunno. But the guys who made the movie decided to, once Regan opened her mouth, give us an excellent close-up of her teeth…

We recognize these yucky teeth from The Sow Is Mine Scene…an icky color, the wear pattern, etc. But! Those teeth appear in only one shot in The Sow Is Mine Scene. The equivalent scene in the novel tells us that, at this point, Regan’s breath is very bad, though one might think that they would have smelled that already. Let’s see some strange Dental Doings…

It is obvious that these teeth are very difference than they were in the last shot. It almost looks like Regan has gold teeth, and this is most reminiscent of…

…where the teeth seem to be somewhat well-aligned. Ok, so then Regan decides to turn the psychologist into a gelding. So she must be restrained!

But restrained in such a way for us to recognize Regan Pretty Teeth. More…

So Regan gets her beautiful teeth back. Again…what a difference a few seconds make when we talk about teeth. Time to get down and dingy in the Crucifix Scene…

People, please listen! I talked about perception earlier, and how hard it is. Here is Tektonikus’s The Exorcist Rule! Do not look at what they want you to look at! Ignore the crucifix! They are controlling your perception. Don’t look at the blood…the one who controls perception controls everything. Ignore the terrible thing you know she is saying, and…this is the hardest part…ignore the fact that she is ruining a very pretty pink and white nightdress! Ok, so her teeth are fairly well aligned, but Regan’s choppers have the icky, grungy look we’ve seen before.

Poor mommy! That is a strange way to get your nice teeth back. Give me back my nice teeth, mommy! But, seconds later, we end up in a very different dentist’s chair indeed…

Say it isn’t so! Can’t you make up your mind about what kind of teeth Sweetie is gonna have?

Regan’s teeth will remain hideous up through the end of the movie…almost. We’ll see something strange at the very end. Now to take a brief look at another scene…the one featuring Chris’s army of doctors at the Berringer Clinic and Foundation. Regan was committed there for an unspecified amount of time before returning home to act out her Crucifix Scene.

Hmmmm.

Perhaps…one more shot…but! Remember the perception rule! Don’t look at the cuts, which aren’t very deep anyway…they’ll heal. Don’t look at the gnawed lips. Don’t look at how she rages like a Person From A Primitive Culture. And…this will be the hardest…ignore the fact that Regan has had to exchange her pretty nightdresses for plain old boring pajamas.

So if you ignore the lips, it being clear that she has been gnawing them…oh! It would appear that The Face doesn’t gnaw his lips! Still, throughout the Berringer Clinic and Foundation Scene, Regan’s teeth stay white and in very good shape. In other words, there is no dizzying effect created by going back and forth between great teeth and yucky teeth, pretty good teeth and terrible teeth. So are teeth important as the color of nightdresses? Yes! Even more so. The Sow Is Mine Scene…

Ok…the Hypnotist Scene…

And now for the Crucifix Scene…

Finally…the Berringer Scene…

Now it’s time to play…

Oh, yes! We can play that game with Nightdresses…we can play that game with pillow cases…and we can play that game with…teeth. Let’s see if the first three things have something in common…

This is from the Sow Is Mine Scene. Chris won’t show her teeth because she has realized that Regan’s are prettier than hers! Who was there? Chris, Sharon, Karl, Dopey Doctor, and the Frontal Lobe Lesion Wizard. Now for the Hypnotist Scene…who was there?

Chris, Dopey Doctor, and the Vegetable Magnetist. That means that only two people were present for both scenes. Now for the best one! Yes! The Crucifix Scene…who was there for that? The way this scene was shot is very important as far as teeth are concerned…

That’s right…Chris. The guys who made the movie made it clear that we should notice that only one witness would be present…we would see everything through the eyes of only one person…

All other possible witnesses were to be excluded. So the only person common in all three scenes was hysterical Chris….with hysterical Chris carefully presented as the only one present in the third scene. So which one of these things is not like the other?

Who was there for the Berringer Scene?

Sure…doctors and nurses…and assorted clowns…apparently 88 of them. Who was not there? Right! So let me get this straight. Whenever Chris around for a Diabolical Scene, Regan’s teeth alternate from great to good to bad to really bad. But in the one scene where Chris was not present, Regan’s teeth remain steady…as it were? Yes. And that leads one to an interesting conclusion. Chris found herself confronted with a dramatic change in Regan, the once all-around-good-girl had suddenly started to show an almost monstrous side…she could be one at this moment, and then the other at that moment. So what did Chris think was wrong with Regan? Mom started badgering the doctor and declaring that…

And I agree with Dr. MacNeil’s diagnosis, and…Chris…Sharon wants her clothes back. But then…

Chris is beginning to express her view that a whole lot more is wrong with Regan than a hyperactive kid in need of Ritalin. I maintain that, in the second shot, she is simply being more truthful about what she really thinks…truthful in the sense of being willing to say it out loud. Depression doesn’t change a person’s whole personality. Still, Chris is wrong again…we know about Bad Girl Regan, who alternates with Good Girl Regan. What is a mother to think? If you ask the medical guys, they still want to chase after a temporal lobe lesion. Dr. Mom has her own idea…

What are you talking about for Christ’s sake! Did you see her or not? She’s acting like she’s fucking out of her mind, psychotic, or a split personality…

 Ding! Ding! Ding! We have a winner! There it is…mommy would explain the two, very different Regans as the result of a split personality. What did Karras really think?

Do you want to hear the background of the case first, Father?
Why?

I think it might be helpful if I give you some background on the different personalities that Regan has manifested. So far I’d say there seem to be three.

Yes! Mom and Karras believe the exact same thing…Regan has a split-personality. But mom thinks in terms of two personalities, whereas Karras thinks there are three. So what was Captain Howdy in the hypnotism scene? Well, the following two bizarre cases indicate something important…

The Three Faces of Eve…a dreadfully awful movie about a woman who claimed to be three people in one. One was probably enough. And…May 1973…

Another fraudulent hoax involving the claim of what was called Split Personality Disorder, more accurately…Dissociative Personality Disorder…something which doesn’t exist. But by December 1973, one thing you would know is that, generally speaking, the other personalities often have names. Many don’t know all of the others, but most are willing to tell you who they are. At the beginning of Regan’s troubles, Chris concluded that there were two personalities in Regan. Was Sybil a dentist? No. But I think the thing that most represented the Good Regan, Smart Regan, Pretty Regan was…her teeth. Mom was a movie-star…so teeth mattered indeed. Linda Blair was a young movie-star…so teeth mattered. Linda Blair had excellent teeth, and those are the teeth we see when we aren’t seeing terrible teeth. I think the real movie queen’s pristine teeth were incorporated into the storyline suggesting that…

…within the context of the Artificial Reality, Chris had cosmetic dentistry performed on Regan, making a pretty girl all that much more pretty. It wasn’t eyes that mattered most…or cuts on the face…or gnawed lips. No, if Regan had a true alter-ego, a True Opposite, conceived of by Chris as a second, and malevolent, personality, she saw this…

…this guy…The Face, whose only real characteristic shared with Regan was, not the beautiful teeth that Regan really had…the opposite of Regan was what made The Face truly repulsive…horrid teeth. So at the beginning of the Troubles For Toots….

The Face was not seen by Regan, it never was…this is a momentary look into the mind of Chris MacNeil…Chris created The Face as a visual image of the other personality in Regan. And the hypnotism scene? Were they looking for a demon? No. Did Chris envision Captain Howdy as a demon? No. Chris wanted to find the name of the other personality…Eve and Sybil indicated that other personalities had names. But the only name that Regan ever used was…Captain Howdy. So was The Face really Captain Howdy? Of course not, the name Captain Howdy was dropped and never mentioned again. And I will give a slight hint that in another essay I will argue that not only was there no demon…there was no other personality. Merrin told Karras that he was wrong…there is but one. Merrin was right, but wrong about a demon being that one.

I would like to add that I’ve been told I’m crazy. Is that true? I dunno. But even if it’s true, that doesn’t mean I’m wrong. I would point to one more thing that could suggest that I’m crazy and right! The second appearance of The Face is actually…the second and third appearance of The Face. That appearance of the face is part of the complex aggregation of images associated with different characters that seem to be set within the context of Karras’s booze-induced nightmare. The appearance of The Face in that context puzzled me. As I thought more and more about it, which I usually don’t do, I finally decided that I understood it. The entire sequence takes place in a split second, and is actually somewhat difficult to see. It will be even harder for me to capture, if not impossible. First, the screen goes black…

Ok, that wasn’t hard to capture. Then The Face appears…

But then! There is suddenly a momentary flash on the screen, followed by The Face again…a second time. It happens so quickly that I simply can’t capture it in a screenshot.  So technically, The Face appears twice in this scene. That is what had me so puzzled. Why this strange flash and double appearance of The Face? Then it came to me. If you see something two times, then you see it twice. If you see something twice, then you see it two times. And that means that as the images flash, looked at purely within this context, the second appearance of The Face is the second time you saw it. There it is. It’s a clue.

Thanks, but I don’t need any help. This is the second time a certain someone saw The Face! And within the Most Complex of Sequences, Regan is totally absent. When the Karras piece is over, and then the falling St. Joseph medal hits the ground, we find ourselves once more back in the real world, as it were…

…with a desperate Chris confronting an Other Worldly Regan.

And so for the scene I originally thought was the worst one in the movie…

…becomes anything but. Only we see The Face in this scene…Chris isn’t even looking in its direction. But there he is, virtually hovering by the mind of Chris MacNeil…something she created to explain something she found almost unbearably painful. The Face appears here as a clear clue to the fact that The Face was a direct creation of Chris MacNeil’s mind. He wasn’t a demon…he wasn’t Captain Howdy…and Chris was wrong about an alter-ego or second personality in Regan that was the opposite of the one thing very important to Chris. And so it is that we get all these close-ups of Regan’s teeth, and Chris’s hysterical belief that her daughter’s teeth alternate between those of Pretty Regan, and those of Repulsive Regan...back and forth. And she wasn’t alone. Karras, from his first audience with Queen Regan to the very end of the film saw Chris’s Regan With The Terrible Teeth. Examples include…

That’s from Karras’s first visit.

That is from Karras’s second visit, as is this…

So she will not be starring in any Colgate or Scope commercials, although, or so I think, she could use copious amounts of both. But this is cool…

I strongly suspect that this strange mirror-reflective view was intended. We can’t see Regan’s eyes in the shot on the right, and there are no cuts on the face of the shot on the left. That means that the only thing we can see in clear contrast in both is the teeth. Now for the exorcism…

Yuck!

Double-yuck!

super-duper yuck!

Karras saw the teeth because Chris described them to him. During the exorcism, did Merrin ever see the teeth? There were plenty of shots of Merrin, and Merrin with Regan, but except for the last few minutes, Karras was always in the room when Merrin was. A few moments passed after Merrin was kicked out of the room, but during that sequence, Regan’s teeth aren’t visible. The wounds on her face were, but that is the topic of a different essay.

But now I will show how Karras, moments before his Self-Imposed-Hellava-Fall, beckoned to suicide by the face of his mother, began to see Regan as she really was…had always been, which he would have seen, if only vomit, urine, and dirty diapers didn’t smell like sauerkraut. Shortly before his great leap into the next world, he attempted to kill Regan. I firmly believe that he never intended to do that. In fact, I think he intended to use Stinker as his alibi as far as the Strange Death of Merrin is concerned. That would have been very difficult to do if he killed her. For Karras, he had a captive audience…

This too…

But overwhelmed with the guilt for the deaths he had caused, this was not…

And so Karras goes on the attack. But, I suppose that Regan really has no right to complain…

Well, except for the fact that she’s a twelve year old girl. But now, here it is! As I said, shortly before he finally caused the voice of guilt to shut up once and for all, Karras suddenly began to see Regan as she really was…

as she had always been…

And so as it goes with Chris, so it goes with Karras. Us too. Regan’s perfect teeth go back and forth to such an extent that it is easy to miss what is really happening. Only Hysterical Chris and Psychotic Karras ever saw Regan with ugly teeth. Chris sees it, and describing it to Karras, Karras then sees it. This is something that will apply to much more than just the shimmer of Regan’s teeth. There is, of course, the question of the Regan’s facial wounds. That will be the subject of another essay to be published shortly. Surely Merrin sees the wounds! They are there after Karras is kicked out of the room. Whatever is visible when Merrin is the only one in the room, then that is how it must be. I agree…absolutely. But as Merrin and Regan’s facial wounds are concerned, I would ask one question that would provide a good hint to what the answer may be. I’ll show this shot…

Now I’ll admit that I am a keen observer of Regan’s night-wear. Please don’t take that the wrong way. But it seems odd that she spent almost the entire time during the exorcism wearing a blue nightdress with frills leading down the front. There was also the unmistakable signs of vomit on that nightdress. So how is it that when Karras enters the room and finds Merrin dead, Regan is now wearing a clean blue robe? Of course, you couldn’t put a nice clean robe on her unless you undid the restraints holding her to the bed…

It seems to me that someone else has been in the room cleaning things up a bit! I guess that one might also ask the question…

…what happened to the broken glass?

And so it is time to end this rather annoying and, no doubt, wrong interpretation and exposition. I hope you found something in it interesting. How important is the color of a nightdress? How important is a Magical Blue Robe? Surely there is nothing exceptional about broken glass that cleans itself up. Oh, that the mess in my house would do that! How important are teeth, whether they are grungy, or sparkle with a snow-white shimmer? I suppose that the only answer I have is…I dunno.