Google Analytics

Friday 13 September 2019

The Exorcist (reposted by beetleypete)

Pete Johnson (the prolific WordPress blogger beetleypete) generously offered space for guests on his blog. I jumped at the chance because he has almost 5,000 followers. I wondered whether there might be interest in my piece about the film The Exorcist originally posted over four years ago during my early blogging days. In all that time it had less than 200 views. Pleasingly, it turned out to be one of Pete’s most viewed posts this week with a cacophany of comments. [my spelling is corrected in the comments below]

beetleypete's guest post invitation is here

the reposted post on Pete's blog is here

The Exorcist


When my son was about eight, he wanted to know what was the scariest film I had ever seen.

“Well,” I said, “there are quite a few, but one of them is so scary that even its name is too frightening to say.”

No eight year-old would let me off that easily, and when it became obvious he was not going to give up I said that I would only tell him when he was eighteen. For now, all I was prepared to say was that it began with an ‘e’. “The rest is too terrifying to think about,” I repeated.

“Excalibur” he said without hesitation, trying to guess.

“I don’t think there is such a ....”

“Yes there is,” he said, “what about The Executioner?”

“Even if it was I wouldn’t tell you,” I said after again having been corrected about the existence of such a film.

“Excrement,” he guessed. I really doubted that one, but not wanting to risk being found ignorant a third time I simply repeated what I’d said already.

This continued on and off for the next few weeks ....
 
Read original post (~1200 words)

12 comments:

  1. I'm not going to read the original 1200 word post, but I will congratulate your son on the excellent choice of 'Excrement'. Out of the mouths of babes and children...

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Oh dear, it seems there is such a film. IMDb dates it 2014. Unfortunately son was well beyond the age of 8 by then.

      Delete
  2. I saw Excalibur when I was a bit too young and parts of that film scared me very much! Amityville Horror and The Exorcist were both sort of equally scary films in my memory.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. He did know about Excalibur being into magic and wizards, but I'd not heard of it.

      Delete
  3. Two or three loyal blog friends are worth more than a 100 discordant sound (meaning of cacophony) of strangers never to be heard (or seen) again.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Thank you Rachel. They didn't all say the same thing but they said it at much the same time.

      Delete
  4. May I humbly point out the correct spelling of - cacophony? Is Pete Johnson the leader of a religious cult? With so many followers perhaps he is related to our oafish Prime Minister. The Pied Piper of Hamelin also had a lot of devoted followers.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. No you may not point it out humbly. Hammer the point home in the most arrogant way possible. It's an unforgiveable slip in standards. I am mortified.

      Delete
    2. You may have noticed my subtle way of indicating the erroneous spelling. I also question the use of the word at all. You may also have noticed that.

      Delete
    3. Noticed you'd spelt it right after YP pointed it out. My attention levels must be low. OK clever crossword solver: what's the collective noun for blog commenters?

      Delete
    4. A parliament?...Oh sorry, that's owls. A pandemonium?...Nope - that's parrots. How about an admiration of bloggers? Yes that sounds about right.

      Delete
    5. I suppose it depends what they are saying: a compliment of commenters, or a cauldron, or a condescension. Although it doesn't have to be alliterative.

      Delete

I welcome comments and hope to respond within a day or two, but vision issues are making this increasingly difficult. Please note: comments on posts over a month old will not appear until they have been moderated.