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Pazuzu Unveiled: The Demon Behind The Exorcist Franchise

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Today’s lesson is gonna make your head spin.

Welcome back to Horror 101, a series of articles where we explain horror movie legends and their lore. For beginners, the confused, or just those who need a refresher, these articles are for you.

We know October 2023 will be a big month for horror, and chiefly among the big releases of that month is David Gordon Green’s hotly anticipated The Exorcist: Believer. This is not only the first film in the series in 18 years, but also the beginning of a brand-new trilogy helmed by Gordon Green following his work on Blumhouse’s Halloween franchise. 

So, in preparation for a new installment, we unearth the true nature of another all-time great antagonist, this time the unforgettable Pazuzu from The Exorcist franchise. The Exorcist’s reputation of being the most frightening horror film ever hinges on the strange demonic entity, whose vile actions while possessing a young Regan MacNeil have permanently engrained him into the cultural consciousness. 

ALL ABOUT THE EXORCIST FRANCHISE

David Gordon Green has said The Exorcist: Believer will treat all the previous films in the series as “acceptable mythology,” implying a sort of extended five-movie canon. For this article, however, Exorcist: The Beginning will be ignored for several reasons: It implies contradictory elements about Pazuzu’s origins with the whole Byzantine Army coverup plotline; By treating it as events following Dominion, it effectively reverses Father Merrin’s story throughout that film; and most importantly, Dominion is closer to the original vision of the prequel as intended by director Paul Schrader and writer William Wisher Jr., which lends credence to it as the “true” version of events.

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The 2016 television series, likewise, will not be touched upon as it only follows the events of the first film and splits off into a separate timeline. And it did that before it was the cool thing to do too!

So, try not to lose faith (or let any of that projectile pea soup touch you) as we explain horror’s most iconic possession and the abomination that caused it.

WHAT IS PAZUZU? 

Initially presenting itself to Regan under the friendlier pseudonym of “Captain Howdy,” the being known as Pazuzu is an ancient demon associated with the Mesopotamian mythological figure of the same name. A demon of the wind in Assyrian mythology specifically, he was the son of Hanbi, who was identified as the Sumerian god of all evil. 

Throughout history Pazuzu has afflicted many humans, but most notable was his possession of a young girl named Regan MacNeil in Georgetown, Washington. Daughter of actress Chris MacNeil, she killed director Burke Dennings under Pazuzu’s influence, and was subsequently exorcised by Father Lankester Merrin and Father Damien Karras at the cost of both of their lives. Though Father Karras identifies three distinct voices and Pazuzu refers to itself as “us,” Father Merrin confirms that Pazuzu is a single entity speaking as a collective.

Throughout the series there is a correlation that Pazuzu may be Satan himself; Pazuzu names himself as such when speaking with Father Karras. This, however, is never confirmed, and given Pazuzu is a notorious liar who plays mind games with Karras to make him walk away from exorcising Regan, this can only be taken as hearsay. 

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WHAT ARE PAZUZU’S ABILITIES?

Pazuzu’s powers are chiefly mental in nature, being able to cause hallucinations, divine information, drastically change temperature, and telekinetically move objects. He could also mimic the voices and likenesses of the dead, which it used to intimidate and deceive its targets. 

And of course, what’s an exorcism without the demon being able to possess victims? Most frighteningly, Pazuzu could warp and change the body of the ones he possessed to perform biologically impossible acts and decay the human form, dislocating limbs, and breaking bones in ways that would kill most. He could also do the opposite and temporarily “heal” victims by removing the disabilities of one of his earliest victims, Cheche, in the movie Dominion.

Animals also seemed to be especially sensitive to Pazuzu’s influence: In Exorcist 2: The Heretic, Pazuzu is able to summon and control swarms of locusts as they were a symbol of his worship. In Dominion he commands a pack of cattle to slaughter a pack of hyenas. 

Stranger even, Pazuzu could manipulate evil souls like that of the Gemini Killer and lend his powers of possession to them. Pazuzu allowed the Gemini Killer to continue murdering from beyond the grave in the body of Father Damien Karras, who he had placed the killer’s soul into at the point of death, extending his lifespan in the process. 

WHAT IS PAZUZU’S WEAKNESS?

Ultimately, the fatal flaw of Pazuzu’s possession was that they were ineffective on people with strong wills and could be suppressed by a person of faith. Or, in the case of Regan MacNeil, around the time of Exorcist 2, a significant force of will and psychic ability.

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WAIT. NOPE. HOLD ON. PSYCHIC ABILITY?

I don’t even want to touch on that last part, but I kind of have to.

In Exorcist 2: The Heretic, it’s revealed that Father Merrin, in his death throes, made a speech to Pazuzu. In it, he detailed that people like Regan and the young man Kokumo had “evolved” psychic abilities that counteracted the evil of Pazuzu (and presumably all other demons) and made them resistant to his powers. 

They are dubbed the “good locusts” of humanity, a callback to Kokumo’s conversation with Father Lamont about actual grasshoppers that could resist changing into locusts and break the chain reaction of the swarm turning aggressive. It’s basically one big bug-based metaphor for humanity slowly growing out of its regressive and selfish ways together, breaking cycles of violence and abuse, and surpassing the evils of Satan. 

Yeah, kind of a weird story decision.

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Nice sentiment, at least?

WHAT DOES PAZUZU WANT?

Primarily, its goal is the ruination of life and the desecration of all sacred things. It’s a demon, what else did you expect? 

However, Pazuzu’s longest-running feud is against the church itself. This began as a long-running rivalry with Lankester Merrin that we first see chronologically in Dominion. Merrin became the primary target of his anger for foiling Pazuzu’s plans in 1947 by saving the life of young possessed Cheche and the other inhabitants of the Derati Valley he had been terrorizing. 

Merrin rediscovered his faith and connection with God through the trials of Pazuzu. The two were then constantly locked in a spiritual battle up until the point of Merrin’s death in the original 1973 film, in which Merrin died clutching to the faith Pazuzu desperately wanted to take from him.

The significance of why Pazuzu takes joy in befouling and mocking men of the cloth makes the most sense thematically: he is an allegory for losing faith in not only the religious sense, but faith in oneself. 

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WHAT HAPPENED TO PAZUZU IN THE END?

Following the events of the first film, Pazuzu eventually moved on to torturing Father Karras through the workings of the Gemini Killer. He was “vanquished” when police Lieutenant Kinderman killed a possessed Karras out of mercy, presumably stopping the Gemini Killer and Pazuzu in one fell swoop. Chronologically, this would be the last time we saw him. 

Ultimately, Pazuzu’s fate is unknown. Though we can assume the demon was trapped or diminished somehow in the process of Father Karras’ true death in The Exorcist III, we can’t truly be sure. 

While David Gordon Green’s new trilogy has yet to confirm, it’d be hard to imagine the series just moving on from Pazuzu. I would hedge my bets that Karras’ demise was simply another chapter in the war of man and devil that Blatty started, and it’s hard to tell if Green will be the one to end the tale.

And that will be it for today’s Horror History 101 lesson. See you in the next class, and stay tuned to Horror Press’s social media feeds for more content concerning horror movies, television, and everything in between!

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Luis Pomales-Diaz is a freelance writer and lover of fantasy, sci-fi, and of course, horror. When he isn't working on a new article or short story, he can usually be found watching schlocky movies and forgotten television shows.

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Misc

Our Halloween Giveaway Is Here!

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Halloween and our final giveaway of the month is also here to spice up your Fall before the Holidays take a snowier, and less creepy turn. So be sure to enter now for a chance to win this prize that’ll be sure to keep the thrills going all season long! Don’t miss out—grab your costume, some BBQ and join the fun.

Enter Our Halloween Giveaway!

How to Enter:

Step 1. Make sure to FOLLOW US ON FACEBOOK AND JOIN OUR FACEBOOK GROUP!

Step 2. LIKE AND SHARE the giveaway post!

Step 3. This is the most important step, email us at contact@horrorpress.com with your FULL Facebook name (so we can verify you’re in the group) and who your favorite character is from the Texas Chainsaw franchise.

**Giveaway entries are limited to addresses in the United States.**

**All entries must be 18 or older to enter**

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What You’ll Win

The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (2003) Limited Edition 4K UHD from Arrow Video

  • 4K (2160p) Ultra HD Blu-ray presentation in Dolby Vision (HDR10 compatible)
  • Original DTS-HD MA 7.1 and 5.1 surround audio and lossless stereo audio
  • Optional English subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing
  • Brand new audio commentary with Dread Central co-founder Steve “Uncle Creepy” Barton and co-host of The Spooky Picture Show podcast Chris MacGibbon
  • Archival audio commentary with director Marcus Nispel, producer Michael Bay, executive producers Brad Fuller and Andrew Form and New Line Cinema founder Robert Shaye
  • Archival audio commentary with Marcus Nispel, director of photography Daniel Pearl, production designer Greg Blair, art director Scott Gallager, sound supervisor Trevor Jolly and composer Steve Jablonsky
  • Archival audio commentary with Marcus Nispel, Michael Bay, writer Scott Kosar, Brad Fuller, Andrew Form and actors Jessica Biel, Erica Leerhsen, Eric Balfour Jonathan Tucker, Mike Vogel and Andrew Bryniarski
  • Reimagining a Classic, a brand new interview with director Marcus Nispel
  • Shadows of Yesteryear, a brand new interview with cinematographer Daniel Pearl
  • The Lost Leatherface, a brand new interview with actor Brett Wagner
  • Masks and Massacres, a brand new interview with makeup effects artist Scott Stoddard
  • Chainsaw Symphony, a brand new interview with composer Steve Jablonsky
  • Chainsaw Redux: Making A Massacre, a making-of documentary
  • Ed Gein: The Ghoul of Plainfield, an in-depth look at the infamous killer who inspired the character of Leatherface
  • Severed Parts, a look at the cutting room floor and some of the scenes excised from the final edit
  • Deleted scenes including an alternate opening and ending
  • Screen tests for Jessica Biel, Eric Balfour and Erica Leerhsen
  • Behind-the-scenes featurette
  • Cast and crew interviews
  • Theatrical trailers and TV spots
  • Concept art galleries
  • Reversible sleeve featuring original and newly commissioned artwork by Aaron Lea
  • Double-sided foldout poster featuring original and newly commissioned artwork by Aaron Lea
  • Illustrated collector’s booklet featuring new writing on the film by Michael Gingold
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NYCC 2025 Horror Highlights: A Sneak Peek at ‘The Lost Boys’ Musical, ‘Resident Evil: Requiem,’ and More!

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As soon as New York Comic Con announced that its 2025 theme would be “haunted,” I started lacing up my comfy shoes and making a beeline for the Javitz Center! Horror has always been represented at the con, but it felt fitting that it should play a central role in this year’s event at a time when the genre seems more popular than ever. 

From beloved family-friendly properties like The Nightmare Before Christmas to pants-dampening titles like the upcoming Resident Evil: Requiem, horror appeared in countless shapes and forms. Here are all the best and scariest insights I gleaned from the show floor, panel rooms, and pop-ups of New York Comic Con 2025! 

Our NYCC 2025 Horror Highlights

Resident Evil: Requiem Is Going to Test Your Bladder Strength

Full disclaimer: I’m not a gamer. I’m honestly pretty bad at games, which made my Resident Evil: Requiem play session all the more frightening because I was convinced that everyone around me would realize I’m a fraud. But with easy-to-grasp controls, even for a newb like me, the latest installment in the iconic horror franchise quickly sucked me in and left me on edge for entirely different reasons. 

During my 30-minute session, I was introduced to FBI analyst Grace Ashcroft, Requiem’s central character. She swims to consciousness to find herself strapped upside down on a gurney with a needle in her arm, siphoning her blood. After Grace managed to free herself, the controls were handed over to me to explore the creepy facility through Grace’s eyes, looking for a fuse. Some spaces were bathed in red light; others were lit only by flickering bulbs that left me white-knuckling the controller, waiting for something to emerge from the shadows and swallow me whole, not helped by Grace’s anxious, stuttering breathing in my ear. 

I took a moment to appreciate how detailed video games have become since my childhood experiences playing Evil Dead: Hail to the King on the original PlayStation (seriously, you can see the dust drifting in beams of light now?!), only for the sound of movement somewhere in the facility to yank me back to the present. I renewed my frantic search for the fuse, only to run blindly into a pitch-black room and encounter something enormous that dragged me into the darkness. Sorry, Grace!

You can find out what happens next when Resident Evil: Requiem releases for the PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S, PC, and Nintendo Switch 2 on February 27, 2026.

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Megan Fox Is Among the New Cast Members in Five Nights at Freddy’s 2—And Blumhouse Hasn’t Given Up on Its Other m3gan Yet

Blumhouse made several announcements at their NYCC panel, most notably that Megan Fox (Jennifer’s Body) is voicing Toy Chica in director Emma Tammi’s highly anticipated sequel Five Nights at Freddy’s 2, coming to theaters on December 5. Other new additions to the cast include YouTuber Matthew Patrick, aka MatPat, who cameoed in the first movie and will voice Toy Bonnie, and Kellen Goff, who has voiced multiple characters in the game series and will now lend his pipes to Toy Freddy.

I’m interested in Five Nights at Freddy’s 2, not least because my best friend is terrified of the franchise and makes a wildly entertaining moviegoing companion—but I’m more interested in the future of another Blumhouse franchise, M3GAN. After the sequel underperformed, likely due in part to its hard genre pivot away from horror and into action territory, the future of the killer doll is uncertain. But in a special industry presentation on “The Business of Fear,” Jason Blum revealed that “we’re all working to keep M3GAN alive,” adding that Blumhouse is exploring other potential mediums before trying to resurrect her on film. 

Does that mean a M3GAN video game might come our way in the future, or perhaps a TV series? I don’t know, but I have a feeling this isn’t the last we’ve seen of the silicone diva.

Photo taken by Samantha McLaren.

The Lost Boys: A New Musical Will Feature Flying Stunts and a Live Vampire Band

My queer heart is a sucker for musical adaptations of horror films I love, so you can be certain that I’ll be heading down to the Santa Carla Boulevard—aka Broadway’s Palace Theater—for The Lost Boys: A New Musical, which begins previews on March 27, 2026. At their NYCC panel, producer Patrick Wilson (The Conjuring franchise), director Michael Arden (Maybe Happy Ending), and cast members LJ Benet, Ali Louis Bourzgui, and Maria Wirries revealed why they feel Joel Schumacher’s 1987 classic translates so well to the stage, and what audiences can look forward to. 

“There’s something that I see with both horror movies, musicals, and superhero movies—there’s an element of melodrama that’s really rewarding,” says Wilson, who began his career in musical theater and worked with Schumacher on the director’s 2004 film adaptation of The Phantom of the Opera. “Some people view it as camp, but there’s a reality of it being heightened that felt like this story cemented itself so much to being a musical.”

“They’re a biker gang, after all, and there’s a level of theatricality to that in and of itself,” says Arden. “Our biker gang also happens to play instruments.” 

That’s right: the vampires will be playing instruments live on stage, which made casting twice as hard. Ali Louis Bourzgui, who plays David, the character portrayed by Kiefer Sutherland in the film, reveals that he plays guitar. And that wasn’t the only unusual request in the casting call: auditions included a flying test. (Presumably wires were involved, unless Arden has found himself a real cabal of vampires in his cast.)

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Other highlights that fans can look forward to include killer music from one of Arden’s favorite bands, The Rescues. You can listen to the song “Have to Have You” right now, featuring instrumentals from Slash. The director also teases that many fan-favorite moments from the film will feature in some way in the musical, including the bridge scene and, yes, even the sexy saxophone guy. 

Greg Nicotero’s Guts & Glory Marks a New Challenge for a Legend of the Business

If you like looking at gnarly practical effects in horror movies, chances are you’re familiar with Greg Nicotero’s work, whether you realize it or not. The legendary SFX artist has worked on everything from George Romero’s Day of the Dead and Sam Raimi’s Evil Dead II to Kill Bill and, more recently, The Walking Dead. The impressive extent of his resume was made clear at the panel “Shudder is Here to Scare the S*** Out of You,” in which almost any film mentioned by the other panelists was met by a small smile and a humble murmur of “worked on that” into the mic, often followed by a wild anecdote. Nicotero seems like the most interesting man in the world to grab a drink with, and his new horror competition show for Shudder—Guts & Glory—will let us see more of the man behind the makeup brush.

Guts & Glory is one of the most fun times I’ve had on a show,” Nicotero says, teasing that the series is “part Sam Raimi, part Halloween Horror Nights, and part Survivor.” 

In the six-episode first season, contestants are dropped into an Alabama swamp, where there’s an urban legend about an evil spirit. “One of the contestants gets possessed by the evil spirit, people start dying off, but in the meantime, they’re still competing and there’s a prize,” Nicotero explains.

Guts & Glory is effects-heavy, which was challenging to do in an unscripted series relying on real people’s real-time reactions. “You do a movie, you can cut and try it again,” Nicotero explains. “[This] was completely out of my wheelhouse and out of my comfort zone, but I’m really, really proud of it.”

Nicotero’s Creepshow was one of the first original shows to debut on Shudder, so he’s truly part of the DNA of the horror streamer, which celebrated its 10th anniversary this year. Guts & Glory premieres on October 14 as part of Shudder’s Season of Screams programming.

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Horror Short The Littles Deserves the Big-Screen Feature Treatment

Some short films are perfectly suited to their bite-sized format, while others contain the seeds of something much bigger. At the New York Premiere of The Littles, a new short written and directed by American Horror Story producer Andrew Duplessie, I could immediately see the potential for the feature film that Duplessie hopes to make. 

Equal parts charming and unsettling, The Littles stars M3GAN’s Violet McGraw as a little girl with a loose floorboard in her bedroom. One night, a scuffling sound and a crack of light between the boards lead the little girl to discover that her family isn’t alone in the house… 

Duplessie says The Littles was inspired by his own experiences growing up in a creaky old house with a no-doubt overactive imagination. The short features creepy-cute stop-motion animation from Anthony Scott (The Nightmare Before Christmas), puppets by Katy Strutz (Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio), and some truly adorable miniature sets by Aiden Creates, all blended perfectly with the live-action scenes. Check it out if it’s playing at a festival near you, and watch this space for a (fingers-crossed) future feature! 

Photo taken by Samantha McLaren.

Disney Publishing’s New The Nightmare Before Christmas Tie-in Novel Welcomes Younger Fans into the Scary Fun

NYCC’s horror happenings weren’t all geared toward an adult audience. Disney Publishing took over Daily Provisions Manhattan West for a pop-up experience inspired by The Nightmare Before Christmas, featuring themed food and drinks like a delectable Pumpkin Potion coffee that I could honestly drink all season long. 

At a media and creator event in the space, I took a look at the newly released Hour of the Pumpkin Queen from New York Times best-selling author Megan Shepherd, who also wrote the official novelization of The Nightmare Before Christmas for the film’s 30th anniversary in 2023. In this new tie-in novel, Sally and her rag doll apprentice, Luna, embark on a time-bending adventure to save Jack Skellington and Halloween Town after falling through a mysterious portal.

I was gifted a copy of the book by Disney, but all opinions are my own here. I’m looking forward to giving it a read during the inevitable Halloween hangover that takes place in November, before likely passing it on to my young nieces when they’re old enough. It’s a full novel, not a picture book, so definitely geared more toward a YA audience, but between the beautiful artwork on the cover and the seasonal theme, it might just be the perfect gift for the budding horror lover in your life. 

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That’s a wrap on New York Comic Con 2025! Be sure to bookmark Horror Press if you haven’t already so you never miss our coverage of conventions, festivals, and more. 

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