William Friedkin was a director who created so many visceral, unforgettable experiences for moviegoers; he was a film-maker who could offer films with the thrillingly intravenous excitement of hard drugs. For some reason, the one that stands out for me is his neo-noir corrupt-cop drama To Live and Die in LA (1985) and, the first time I saw it, almost rising from my seat during the airport car chase and a particularly gasp-inducing high-fall stunt.
Friedkin gave us a number of classics in the early 1970s, but his queasy and diabolically inspired masterpiece was surely The Exorcist from 1973, adapted by William Peter Blatty from his original novel. This was the quintessential horror-pleasure of that period, the era of people lining up around the block to get into the cinema to see something that they hoped, expected and feared would scare them half to death, a rollercoaster ride out into the void. Just as Steven Spielberg was to give the Roger Corman schlock-horror fantasies about evil creatures a sophisticated upgrade with Jaws, so Friedkin effectively did with horror, making it thrillingly contemporary and respectable.
