Misc
HORROR 101: WHO, OR WHAT, IS PAZUZU IN THE EXORCIST SERIES?
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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!
Misc
[INTERVIEW] Can AI Consent? An Interview With the Crew Behind ‘Black Eyed Susan’
Black Eyed Susan was a stand-out hit at Brooklyn Horror Film Fest this year. In the film, the down-on-his-luck Derek (Damian Maffei) is coerced into product testing Susan (Yvonne Emilie Thälker), a life-like sex doll meant to be able to take a beating and bleed and bruise like a real person. Susan’s complex AI leads to conflicted feelings from Derek. The audience at the fest was open to the challenge of Black Eyed Susan’s taboo and transgressive subject matter. To gain a little more insight into the film, I talked with writer and director Scooter McCrae and lead actor Yvonne Emilie Thälker.
Black Eyed Susan was a stand-out hit at Brooklyn Horror Film Fest this year. In the film, the down-on-his-luck Derek (Damian Maffei) is coerced into product testing Susan (Yvonne Emilie Thälker), a life-like sex doll meant to be able to take a beating and bleed and bruise like a real person. Susan’s complex AI leads to conflicted feelings from Derek. The audience at the fest was open to the challenge of Black Eyed Susan’s taboo and transgressive subject matter. To gain a little more insight into the film, I talked with writer and director Scooter McCrae and lead actor Yvonne Emilie Thälker.
[Ed. note: This interview has been edited for length and clarity.]
An Interview with Scooter McCrae and Yvonne Emilie Thälker
Horror Press: Where did the inspiration for the film come from?
Scooter McCrae: It came from the deepest darkest recesses of my usually very sunny, open, and fun mind. There was no inciting incident that led to the screenplay being written. I was very much thinking about being a guy, and getting older, and thinking “Everything’s been really good” but even with that there’s certain things that we think about that tend to just go dark. I find that a great place to play. It helps give the lighter moments their weight.
HP: Chuck Palahniuk’s short story Exodus has similar themes and mentions “turning people into objects and objects into people. How does that idea apply to Black Eyed Susan?
Yvonne Emilie Thälker: We’re asking ourselves the question of “what is a person?”, and that goes back to Frankenstein. That’s one of the wonderful things I love about sci-fi movies and, to an extent, horror movies. Black Eyed Susan is a mash up. It is kind of asking a lot of those same questions: Is how you treat objects a reflection of how you treat people? How do we treat an AI that mimics a human, and how does it reflect on us? We write sci-fi and horror to examine our fears around humanity.
SM: To Yvonne’s point, really good science fiction is about sociology. It’s not about the technology itself. You know, that’s a bit of, as I like to say it’s the cheese and the mouse trap.
We live in a world where corporations are people, and real people don’t even get the same respect or tax breaks that fucking corporations get. There’s just so much inequality between objects and people. And sometimes I think objects get the better deal and people get the raw deal, and sometimes it works the other way around as well. But in science fiction especially, there’s going to be a point at which people and technology are just simply going to meet, and there’s going to be some kind of sociological showdown trying to figure out who gets what rights and who gets to say what, and which one has more validity.
HP: Yvonne, What was it like to play a role that is highly gendered and objectified as a nonbinary person?
YET: It’s probably impossible to put all of my ideas about my own gender and the role into a succinct couple of words, because I think aspects of my gender can be very fluid. They can also be kind of agnostic- I’ve got other things to worry about. Every nonbinary person is different. As a model too, there are times where being in a very feminine dress or role for the camera feels like drag. It feels like a thing I’m putting on, but it’s not a full reflection of who I am. But that’s what acting is.
I really like the ability to shape shift. That’s one thing that people would sometimes tell me as a model throughout the years. To me, that’s a big compliment. I like the ability to be chameleon-like and look one way in one shot and then very different in another.
So I really relish the opportunity to play roles that are very much not me, even if there probably is a twinge of feeling slightly uncomfortable being in this kind of very specific, objectified feminine space. I’d love the opportunity to play other types of characters and other types of genders that I’m not.
HP: It’s also empowering to see another nonbinary person in a lead role!
YET: That’s so wonderful to hear! That is the main reason why I decided to be assertive about my pronouns and my identity early on. I think it is important to be myself and an example for others. Seeing yourself represented is so important and can help people not just to come into their own, but also let them know that they belong in this world.
SM: I like what you’re saying too because the representation isn’t the point of the character or the story.
HP: I think a lot of times, people who might not know a trans person only think of us as our identity and don’t realize that we have full lives outside of that.
HP: What does it mean to have a sexual relationship with someone or something who can’t consent? Especially when they might not be a person, but look like one.
SM: That goes to like vibrators or dildos or fake pussies to an extent. Are they willing participants? You just don’t think of it that way. The fact that the doll in the movie has an AI, that’s what is causing confusion; the fact that it has the ability to give off the impression of having sentience. And with sentience comes the question of consent.
I’d like to think that the movie does talk about it. And the great thing about being a writer or a filmmaker is that I get to ask all the questions I want, and I reserve the opportunity to not have to ever answer them. That’s art. You don’t have to answer these questions, but raising them is what’s important.
YET: I would say for me, I actually feel like Susan consents. She’s designed to not only physically be able to take a beating, but to kind of want it. So there’s that issue of: she’s designed to consent. Is that really consent? It is possible to be in BDSM culture and to want to take a certain level of violence. You are consenting to it and you want it because it is cathartic for you in some way. But you know, the story of Susan, I think goes beyond that. For me, the sticky issue is more: how are you okay doing this to something so human like and not doing that to a real human?
HP: I’m wondering what that does to our conditioning. Also in terms of what we see about heterosexual relationships in the media and pornography.
YET: It does influence us when all the women are represented as young and small and beautiful and mostly white and able-bodied and it’s like, there’s no stretch marks, there’s no chipped nail polish. But then when some men encounter real women they’re like, “Oh my God, when this woman that I went on a date with took her makeup off, she’s got acne and under eye bags”. I think that’s a very specific kind of misogyny working there.
It leads to this type of paranoia with people thinking, “Is my body good enough? Is my skin clear enough? Am I fit enough? Am I strong enough?” I think a doll like Susan could be very harmful in terms of if men were routinely using these dolls and abusing them, and then, they try to have a relationship with a real person, and the real person is like, “Yes, I’m into BDSM, but we need to use these safe words and safe practices. I need to feel like I trust you.” Then it shatters the illusion. We’re seeing the beginning of that in the world of Black Eyed Susan, where it’s going to lead to these unhealthy expectations, and, in my opinion, lead to actual abuse of actual humans.
SM: Yeah, addressing the illusion is important. Understanding why something is an illusion is part of the fun of it. It doesn’t take away from the pleasure factor. If you’re doing it right, it adds a level of confidence. When you go to see a movie, you’re not going to say, “It’s all fake. Well, what a waste of my time.”
As someone who does like pornography, and quite a bit, I’ll bring up Sturgeon’s Law, which is that 95% of everything is shit. And this applies to pornography, probably more than anything else. You watch whatever you want, as long as you know that it is, of course, fake and that the people making it are professionals.
In fact, I used to shoot and edit porn, and what’s interesting here is that the people who were making them were basically friends. They all work locally in the industry, but when they would get together, it was a lot of fun. People got paid. They were shot quickly and low-budget, but people were actually having a great time. People were cumming. We’d shoot them in a day or two at most, and it was just the best possible representation of how good pornography can get made by people having a good time and wanting to make stuff that gets out there and promotes just having fun. The worst shoot I ever did, some people came in from LA for me to shoot in a hotel: absolutely the worst porn shoot I ever had to do in my entire life. They were just literally snorting coke, and just, it was just awful. It was the worst cliche. And I couldn’t even believe I was there. It was just like watching zombies engage in calisthenics.
Many thanks to Scooter McCree and Yvonne Emilie Thälker for talking the time to talk with us at Brooklyn Horror Film Festival.
You can preorder Black Eyed Susan via Vinegar Syndrome here!
Misc
[REVIEW] The ‘Slayed’ LGBTQ+ Shorts Block at BHFF 2024 Tapped Into Queer Nightmares and Daydreams
Brooklyn Horror Film Festival is over for another year, but many of the films I saw will linger long on my mind. That’s especially true for those that played as part of the annual ‘Slayed’ shorts block.
Horror Press was once again proud to sponsor ‘Slayed,’ which exists to elevate short films made by LGBTQ+ filmmakers and focusing on queer themes. If you couldn’t make it this year, check out our round-up of the block below.
Beach Logs Kill (dir. Haley Z. Boston)
A surreal daydream edges into nightmare territory in writer-director Haley Z. Boston’s Beach Logs Kill. The short centers on an always-in-detention misfit (Abby Quinn) who finds herself drawn inexorably to the school’s beloved quarterback, Number 36 (Ryan Simpkins). After a charged encounter in the locker room that may or may not have been in the misfit’s head, Number 36 heads out onto the field, where a horrific accident awaits them.
Beach Log Kills masterfully captures that muddled moment in all our queer awakenings when we can’t quite decide if we want to be with someone or be them — that place where desire and obsession collide, hesitation reigns, and anything could happen, but, inevitably, nothing does. Boston reclaims jock machismo through a queer, femme-forward lens, offering a locker room fantasy for every girl who ever watched their crush from afar, afraid to tell, along with one of the most memorable uses of a tampon in horror this year.
Lady Parts (dir. Ariel McCleese)
Some girls just make you wet. In the case of Iris (Ava Hase), dreaming about Ellie (Liv Mai) leaves her practically drenched. Writer-director Ariel McCleese takes this concept to the edge and beyond in her short Lady Parts, which combines elements of body horror and vaginal imagery with enough goop to make Cronenberg proud.
The short focuses on Iris’s struggle to confront her sexuality even as it threatens to spill over and consume all. An encounter with a boy, Ethan (Jake Holley), ends in tragedy, her body revolting. But what was forced and unpleasant with Ethan is beautiful and natural with Ellie, leaving them both reveling in the wetness.
Unsettled (dir. Bella Thorne)
The words “This is a true story” flash on screen like a punch to the gut at the end of Unsettled, a queer nightmare written and directed by Bella Thorne and based on the experiences of producer and star Jason Parks. Parks plays Jay, a young man whose night at a gay club in the Bible Belt of Oklahoma ends with him waking up bound in a bathtub, having been drugged and abducted by two men.
Thorne’s direction carefully balances frantic moments with quiet, breathless terror, and it will be interesting to see what she does with the material when she adapts it into her feature directorial debut, Color Your Hurt. Parks has said in interviews that making and watching the short was a “cathartic” experience, which is good to hear because the events depicted in it are truly horrifying. But the scariest part is the apathy of law enforcement and onlookers — and the haunting unspoken question of what might have happened to Jay/Parks if he didn’t break free.
Dream Factory (dir. Alex Matraxia)
The role of cruising in the gay community has faded over time as unambiguous queer bars and hook-up apps have proliferated. Writer-director Alex Matraxia’s experimental short film Dream Factory stirs the ghosts of this era, inviting viewers into a location that has long played an important role in the queer experience, both as a site to cruise in the relative obscurity of darkness and as a place to feel seen: the cinema.
Clocking in at around six minutes, Matraxia’s dialogue-free short doesn’t follow a conventional narrative, instead invoking a pervasive air of eroticism tinged with danger. Two men meet beneath the flickering light of the projector, while a cowboy and gangster, two archetypes of masculinity, fill the screen and a mysterious blonde figure roams the hall. The incessant hum of the projector underscores all as lips linger over ears and bodies stalk and crash.
Rat! (dir. Neal Suresh Mulani)
In addition to handling writing and directing duties, Neal Mulani stars in Rat!, a comedic horror short about the perils of provoking stan Twitter. Mulani plays Navin, an entertainment journalist who goes viral for posting a video criticizing a major pop star, Wally Max (Jacob Berger), for supposed queerbaiting. His editor may love it, but the star’s fans do not, leading some to hunt him down.
Rat! is especially interesting in its exploration of the gray areas of internet culture. Max’s fans are clearly in the wrong for taking fandom too far, but Navin isn’t entirely in the right, either. Mulani shows him looking up what others are saying about Max before composing his video, blatantly looking for an angle rather than expressing his true thoughts. And while there’s an important conversation to be had about the trend of real queer people (especially queer people of color) being shouted down by fans in these conversations, so is there a danger of making assumptions about the sexuality and gender identity of others.
Stink (dir. Matias Breuer)
There’s something so uncomfortable about the idea of being watched without your knowledge. Writer Drew Beckman and director Matias Breuer take voyeurism to a violating new level with Stink, an unsettling tale of unseen obsession.
The short opens on the beach, where a stalker (Beckman) watches the handsome Levi (Karan Menon) sunbathe. An eerie voiceover gives us a glimpse into the true depths of the stalker’s obsession as he draws closer to Levi, crossing more and more boundaries, dipping his fingers in a glob of saliva left behind in the sand and raising them to his lips. Things only escalate from there as the stalker enters Levi’s apartment while he’s in the shower, transfixed by his smell, desperate to taste. His thirst satiated for now, he moves on to his next obsession, but we’re left with the disquieting question of whether he’ll take things even further next time.
Girls (dir. Julien Hosmalin)
The soft, shy queer female gaze is juxtaposed with a leering, violent male one in Girls, directed by Julien Hosmalin, who co-wrote the script with Olivier Torres. This stylish French horror short centers around lounge singer Ally (Carmen Kassovitz), who runs away with Romane (Natacha Krief) on her motorbike, looking for a little peace. But when the bike breaks down, their getaway devolves into a nightmare as Ally is kidnapped by a sex trafficking ring and put up for auction.
With a truly satisfying climax, Girls is proof that the revenge subgenre needs more sapphic entries. If you’ve ever wanted to see a motorbike used as a weapon, this is the short for you.
We hope this recap convinces you to check out the ‘Slayed’ shorts block at Brooklyn Horror Film Festival 2025. Until then, keep an eye out for these shorts, and be sure to support the filmmakers behind them.