It is time, yet again, to discuss another very significant character in the The Exorcist…a character that I’ll bet very few commentators have commentated on. At first I missed how important he is, and particularly to what I have discussed in other essays on this site, a pseudo-vocabulary word…Time Distortion. I should say that my big sis is family-court lawyer, and she volunteered me to be the legal guardian of yet another young lady…Penny. She’s cute as a button, as you can see above. But I think she’s having a negative influence on Scurvy. That led to what I thought was a full-proof solution that worked well with Elizabeth Bathory, but apparently it is not working as well as I thought…

Alas! Bathory lived in a castle, and I’ll bet Penny couldn’t break out from behind thick castle walls. But I must confess, she did point out the importance of an important character…

Can you help out an old altar boy, father?

Karras will, in the first visit to see Regan, hear this voice. Why is he important? Karras is in the subway, awaiting the train to go to visit his mother. While he’s waiting, he notices this guy. And here the old rule…All Close-ups Are Important…applies as well.

In fact, it is an extended close-up. So does this guy appear elsewhere, and if so, what is the big deal?

We don’t actually see Karras leave the subway, but we do see him walking down the street as he heads for Mother Karras’s apartment. And my, what a bad part of town she lives in! And she seems to be expecting him…

I believe the woman in the window to be Mrs. Karras, though she will change her appearance before Karras arrives in the apartment. So, clearly she is expecting him. But if we follow Karras as he strolls to his mother’s apartment…

I believe that this man is the man Karras encountered in the subway. He has a newspaper, which we also find with the man in the subway, and in his right hand he has a bottle of booze, possibly a beer. Moreover, the shoes seem to match. But notice this…

Hidden clue time! That’s Pretty Penny’s favorite game! And it’s not too expensive. Very briefly, a small light in the otherwise pitch-dark entrance to the building appears, pointing at the man on the steps. Look here! Of course, the movie is littered with such hidden clues. But the significance of this man, who is the first clue as to solution of the problem of Karras’s visit to his mother, is legion. Hah!

Riddle me this! How can one man be in two places at once? In other essays I have discussed the phenomenon called bilocation. It signifies a person being in two places at the same time.

There are several figures in Christianity who made the claim they were able bilocate, including…

…Saint Alphonsus, and…

…Saint Drogo. I included him because Annabelle thinks his name is cool. But there are several more saints who are reputed to have had this ability. But! The unnamed man is not named Alphonsus or Drogo…the unnamed man remains…unnamed.  So the answer to the enigmatic question asked earlier is…the booze-oriented man can NOT be in two places at once. And that means that Karras must have made two trips to his mother’s apartment, one when he encountered the trampish man in the subway, and one when he passed the same man sitting on the steps in front of the apartment building, reading a newspaper and drinking his booze. Thus two visits to his Mother Karras’s apartment have been overlayed on top each other, creating the illusion of only one visit to Mother Karras’s apartment. And this clearly proves that there are serious time distortions in the movie. But there is much more to this.

He finds his mother, apparently, asleep. I think she was the woman in the window, and that when she saw her son coming down the sidewalk, she hastily wrapped her leg, and pretended to be asleep. Hidden clue time!

My isn’t Pretty Penny good at this game! On Mrs. Karras’s right wrist, she wears a bandage, which she undoubtedly got while she was in the hospital. This alone starts distorting time. Hidden clue time!

Here, Mrs. Karras, who seems completely out of it, is wearing the bandage. Clearly, chronologically, this scene must follow the hospital scene, when Karras takes his mother home. But! This scene must happen within a day or two of coming home from the hospital, or she would have removed it and thrown it away. Time to play musical wrists!

Look closely at her right wrist…there is no sign of the bandage. But you can play musical chairs too!

This is Mrs. Karras in her rocking chair. And if you watch the scene, she is rocking away in her rocking chair. Rock on! Yes! This requires two good legs. But…

…she has moved from her rocking chair to her overstuffed chair…and her leg hurts and hurts. If you watch the scene, you’ll see her grimacing in pain.

Now, bandage and rocking chair again. Mrs. Karras is in the act of passing out. Rocking chair? That will be clear in a few short moments.

Now it’s back to the comfy chair. And look! She is wide awake, alive and kicking. Some people just can’t choose a chair…apparently.

Back to the rocking chair? Seriously? But her leg was causing so much pain! No, it is clear from the chairs, her wrists, and her being conscious vs. unconscious that these must be two different visits to the apartment. Ouchy leg and comfy chair occurred before she went to the hospital. Rocking chair, much better leg, hospital bandage, and passed out is after she returned home. And thus the time distortion! Parts of the movie are not only out of sequence, but two major parts of the film have been laid over one another. The makers of the film successfully fooled viewers for decades! Until Penny came along. Still more…

Watch the pictures on the right of shot.

…they’re on Karras’s left. Going back a few minutes…

…look at the pictures. Right! It’s left! When you enter the apartment from the back fire-door, and walk into the main room, the pictures are always on your left. And that means that when you leave the same way…

Right! They’re on the right. So entering the apartment from the little room, the pictures and dresser are on the left, and then leaving out the little room... they’re on the right. If you watch the action, Karras walks through the door into the apartment, then makes a half circle, and leaves the apartment. This is impossible. If he had just entered the apartment from the little room and walked over to Mrs. Karras to her right, then he would actually have to turn around and double back, or make a circle to go back out of the apartment through the little room. These two shots are separated in a somewhat sneaky way…

He has passes through utter darkness, and this is the break between entering the apartment and exiting the apartment, without doubling back or making a circle to get back to the door to the little room. And it is clear that the act of exiting is to be connected to…

…Mrs. Karras in her rocking chair…passed out? I don’t believe so. She has been murdered, probably given an overdose of something without knowing it. Something to help you sleep. She’s also been posed. Why?

Karras leaves money behind. This serves two purposes…why would I kill her and leave money? That’s a little too easy. Eventually, there will the smell of decay emanating from the apartment. The neighbors will call the building super, who will enter the apartment, then call the police. The police will be confronted by an apartment locked from the inside. So how did she die? If we kill her, it would be great if the cops thought she was an old lady who died because she was old. That means the police cannot suspect foul play. Someone broke in to rob the apartment and killed Mrs. Karras? No! If so, why leave cash behind? And there would have been a struggle, so her body would not be found in the rocking chair posed as she is. If we kill her, which is not nice, we are at the same time creating a scene where an old woman died of old age. It would be nice to create a little time distortion for the cops too! So we…

Now I’ll admit, all of this got me so confused. In my desperation, I turned to Darla. I’ll have to confess, begrudgingly, that I think she’s right.

Yes, I said she may be right. Don’t let it go your head, kiddo. She said I should re-arrange the shots so as to show a basic chronology, which goes to show just how much time distortion is in the film. I did something similar in an earlier essay, where I pointed out that there was a shot out of sequence in the scene featuring Regan in two different night-dresses. I re-arranged the shots to get the right sequence. So I will follow Darla’s advice and do that here…

The last thing to do is play…count the Damiens. First, one Damien for the first visit, and one Damien for the second visit.

Two Damiens and 2 loving-cups. But now for the best! As he leaves the apartment, he leaves the money, and then kisses his mother. Hidden clue time!

It happens for only a split second…a reflection of Karras’s face as he walks by. Two Damiens. Wait, I suppose that’s really one and one-half Damiens. One side of Damien would appear to be very dark indeed.