It was *bloody* hilarious :)
I think you're being a bit harsh.
The demon plainly had a sense of humour, and its actions were frequently funny,
but to maintain that the film as a whole was "hilarious" seems to me to be
missing the point.
You're not the first person I've heard say this, though.
It's a different sort of style to modern films, and set in a different era too.
You guys weren't born when that film was made. TVs were still a rarity, and
predominantly in black and white. Brain surgery basically involved poking a
sharp stick in someone's head, and wiggling it about. There was no sex
education in schools. Traditional family values and apple pie were the norm.
12-year-old girls didn't swear. Bad language was still shocking on TV and in
films. Muffin the mule, and Andy Pandy were top class childrens TV programmes.
I found the strong and deliberate use of contrasting scenes really effective.
Sudden switches from a world of quiet, orderly living rooms, with quaint
ornaments, and grand pianos, to screaming lunatic asylums or monstrous
radioactive machinery brought home the fact that truly horrible things happen
to perfectly ordinary people.
The scenes of wailing, gibbering people, in starched white clinical dresses,
locked up for the rest of their lives, with no hope of escape...
Doctors in white coats, with plainly no fucking idea whatsoever, making bold
pronouncements on the state of the brain, and wielding near-prehistoric
battered ironmongery with brash and reckless confidence.
I found this stuff really scary.
Ok, so I'm as jaded as the rest of you, when it comes to special effects, and
tales of demonic posession.
I think with this film you've perhaps got so put a little more effort into the
suspension of disbelief, and also put yourself in the mindset of people who
were a little more old-fashioned, and perhaps had a stronger sense of family,
and religeous conviction.
<Minor spoiler>
Remember - if you were a priest, and you loved your mother. If you were still
in mourning after her death, and still consumed by guilt over it, then being
told that she sucked cocks in hell would probably actually upset you.
We find it funny, but try walking into a church down the road from you, and
talking to one of the little old ladies sitting at the back. Ask if she's been
recently widowed, and when you find one that has, tell her you're a medium, and
have a message from her dead husband, who doesn't want to see her again,
because he's in hell being shagged up the arse by Satan. And he likes it.
Well, actually, I'd rather you didn't, but you see my point.
Dominic.
"Never sleep with anyone crazier than yourself (includes cats)."
