Thread by @sadydoyle

For all the questions people have asked me about "The Exorcist," no-one has asked me about my most deeply held opinion, which is that Mercedes McCambridge gave the most hardcore performance of the entire horror genre - maybe of the century - and wasn't even listed in the credits.

Friends: Picture this. You, Mercedes McCambridge, are a 57-year-old woman. Your heyday was as a radio actress. Your career is mostly over. You're a recovering alcoholic. And one day you get a call: Someone wants you to be the voice of the Devil.

Mercedes McCambridge sits down, and she asks herself how she can embody a creature that is absolute pure meanness. Something with endless rage, no soul, something so evil you can't stand to look at it. And she thinks, "oh, right. That's me when I drink."

Mercedes McCambridge calls her priest and tells him to stay on-call, because she has a job. She's the Devil now. And she needs to be drunk the entire time she's recording that role.

Mercedes McCambridge goes off the wagon for the part. But that's not enough. The Devil isn't just evil, the Devil is trapped. So Mercedes gets strong men to strap her into a chair, tie her up as tight as they can, and put her, almost completely powerless, near the mic.

She's chain-smoking because she thinks it sounds creepy when she wheezes. She's gargling eggs to fuck her throat up and make her phlegmy. She's doing shots. And then it's time to be the Devil. So they turn the mic on and MERCEDES
STARTS
SCREAMING

And that's what you're hearing, in "The Exorcist." An old woman who is tied up, making herself sick, a woman who has literally risked her soul for this part, just screaming and screaming and screaming as loud as she possibly can.

After the movie wraps she quits drinking again. She gets herself back. I ask you: If this were a man, if this were Christian Bale, would we EVER stop hearing about how hardcore that performance is? How fucking Method it was? How brave she is, how great, how terrifying she was?

Because that's not what happened to Mercedes McCambridge. She was "just" a voice actor & Friedkin thought it would be cooler to claim Linda Blair was doing all that herself, so Mercedes McCambridge was cut from the credits of "The Exorcist." It took decades to put her back in.

MERCEDES! MC! CAMBRIDGE! Best single performance in a horror movie! Fundamentally changed the genre! Gambled her soul with the Devil AND WON! Remember the name!

I do not, in fact, have a SoundCloud, but I would probably be remiss if I didn’t tell you I just wrote a book on gender politics, monsters and horror: penguinrandomhouse.com/books/610854/d…