Cursed Movies: The Wizard of Oz and the Exorcist
Can movies really be cursed? Today, we're looking at what's fact and what's fiction when it comes to The Wizard of Oz and The Exorcist.
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SOURCES
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/dec/20/the-exorcist-boy-named-magazine
https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/local/2000/10/21/front-page-1949-boy-freed-of-possession-by-the-devil/e3567d03-f076-400a-9fa4-af77f9791da2/
https://books.google.com/books?id=RR9QAQAAQBAJ&lpg=PP1&pg=PA169&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q&f=false
https://www.cbc.ca/radio/q/blog/the-wizard-of-oz-at-80-fascinating-facts-about-the-cursed-film-classic-1.5258255
https://web.archive.org/web/20210215200451/https://inews.co.uk/culture/film/exorcist-curse-horror-movie-95516
https://books.google.com/books?id=iqEcAgAAQBAJ&pg=PA13&source=gbs_toc_r&cad=3#v=onepage&q&f=false
Cursed Films, documentary, Shudder
TRANSCRIPT
In 2018, I had the opportunity to work on the movie Annabelle: Comes home. Not in like, any sort of important capacity, but I did get to go to set quite a bit. If you haven’t seen it, the movie takes place in the Warrens house, on a night that the haunted annabelle doll escapes from her glass case. Almost all of the movie takes place in a house that was built on a soundstage on the warner bros lot. Side note, If you're ever watching that movie and get scared, just know I’m on the other side of the set eating m&ms and taking selfies with the Annabelle doll when she wasn’t being used.
On the first day of production, as lights were being set up and actors were just coming to set, the first AD called everyone over to one of the rooms. We all crowded together, shoulder to shoulder amongst the replica artifacts in the Warrens collection, a monkey with cymbals, a music box, a wedding dress on a mannequin, all objects that represented the cursed objects the real Warrens kept in their Connecticut home. As we’re in there, a priest walks in. at first I assumed he was just an actor in a priest collar, but one of the producers stepped forward to introduce him. A real, Jesuit priest who had come to bless the set.
As you can imagine, I was so confused. We all bowed our heads and the priest lead us through a quick prayer and splashed holy water around the set, small droplets of water hitting the monkey, the music box, the dress. Afterwards, I asked one of the producers what just happened. And I was not expecting his response
He told me that we were dealing with subject matter that some people take extremely seriously. Demons, the devil, curses. And that there had been a history of movies, like ours, that had a series of horrible things happen on them. Some even said that those movies were cursed. So, we had a priest come and bless the set, think of it like insurance that nothing goes wrong.
That lead me down a deep rabbit hole of movies people have claimed were cursed. And I’ll say, whether or not you believe in curses, you can’t deny that there have been movies where a lot of horrible things have happened and had lasting consequences.
In this episode I want to share some of what I found with you. I want to start with the Wizard of Oz, which though not demonic, is a movie many people point to as being cursed. But then I want to talk about The Exorcist, the movie that inspired other movies to bring priests to bless the set. It’s a movie that deals with the devil himself, people thought that even screening the movie in theaters would invite the devil out.
And as always, listener discretion is advised.
Welcome to Heart Starts pounding, a podcast of horrors, hauntings, and mysteries. I’m your host, Kaelyn Moore.
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Ok, there’s a lot to cover today so let’s get into it.
I remember the first time I watched the Wizard of Oz as a kid. There’s just something about it where, even though it was released in 1939, it’s timeless. It’s the story of a girl who’s fed up with the frustrations of home and goes on a great technicolor adventure with creatures that don’t exist in our world. She takes down the two main villains, though one accidentally, learns the wizard is a sham. And none of this jades her, she keeps her sense of wonder the entire time, and in the end, she learns that there really was no place like home.
It’s a story that every age can relate to. And as a kid I was so entranced by the world, the wonder of the film. But it wasn’t long until I started hearing about the darkness that lurks within the movie, mostly from the actual production of it.
First, it was at sleepovers. You know there’s a munchkin who hung himself in the original version” my friends, always the ones with older siblings, would tell me. No matter how many times I watched the film though, I could never see it. Maybe it was just an older copy where that scene accidentally slipped in. somehow visible to second graders, but not to the director who spent hundreds of hours rewatching the film.
I want to look at what’s fact and what’s fiction when it comes to The Wizard of Oz, a movie people have claimed is the most cursed of all movies because of the sheer number of incidents that occurred while making the film. And i also want to look at the long term effects of these incidents
The costumes are one of the best parts of the Wizard of Oz, but they also proved to be the most accident prone. Nearly everyone in the main cast, save Dorothy, is in a costume that covers their arms and legs. The lion and scarecrow are covered in padding and thick cloth, and the tin man has an almost full body coat of armor on. The costumes look fun and almost make-shift in the movie, but it takes on a new meaning when you learn that the temperature on set would get up to 100 degrees fahrenheit, or 38 celsius during shooting. The set was so big that the director, Victor Fleming, had crew gather as many unused lights in hollywood as they could to light it. This led to temperatures on set becoming overwhelming. Some crew members would pass out and be carried off set. It got so bad that they had a fire marshal nearby at all times to monitor the temperature so the background didn’t catch fire.
Occasionally, when the fire marshal ruled that it was about to go up in flames, they were ordered to turn off all of the lights and open the doors to the sound stage they were filming on. The actors would sprint outside to gasp for air and dry their sweat. Bert Lahr, the actor who played the lion, would try to take his suit off in between shots to cool down, and other actors remembered seeing that all of his clothes underneath would be completely soaked in sweat.
Bert’s makeup man once remarked that Bert would come to set and look himself in the mirror for 10 or 15 minutes before he’d sit in the makeup chair, trying to pump himself up for the process he hated so much. Putting on his costume took almost 2 hours every day, and left only his cheeks and eyes exposed. Every other square inch of his body was covered by costume or prosthetics. Once the prosthetics were on his face, he could only consume food and drink through a straw. So on top of enduring sweltering heat all day, his lunch was usually a hot, blended soup.
But the Lion costume wasn’t the only one that caused trouble on the set. You may have heard about what happened to the original tin man, Buddy Ebsen. Buddy was originally cast as the scarecrow, a role that was then given to actor Ray Bolger when he decided that he didn’t want to play the tinman.
So Buddy was recast as the tin man. The role required the actor to wear a tin suit, with any remaining skin being painted silver. To achieve this coloration, production would paint Buddy’s skin white, and then dust the white paint with powdered aluminum.
At first, it seemed like this was achieving the desired look with no consequences, but then, on set, Buddy’s hands and feet started cramping. Soon, his arms and legs were cramping so badly he was having trouble standing up. Eventually, he felt like he couldn’t breathe, and was rushed to the hospital with pneumonia. The doctor told him that his lungs were coated in the aluminum particle dust that he had been breathing in while they painted him. His lungs were permanently scarred and for the rest of his life he’d suffer from bouts of bronchitis. So I guess you could say the curse of the movie followed him later in life.
Buddy was replaced by actor Jack Haley, and now the aluminum particles were first blended into the white paint and then painted onto his body. Jack confessed later that he too had trouble breathing as the tin man, but he wasn’t suffering from the same cramping as Buddy so he had to just continue on.
The ability to carry on throughout production seems to be a theme, though, there were some people who probably should have been stopped. One day, an actor playing one of the munchkins, Charles Kelley, brought two loaded guns to set. According to him, he felt that the actor playing the mayor of Munchkinland, Charley Becker, was eyeing his wife and he wanted to tell him to back off.
Charles Kelley was disarmed by production and told to not bring guns to work anymore, but was allowed to keep on working. As for his wife and the mayor, he was right, the two eventually got married.
Margaret Hamilton, the woman who played the wicked witch of the west, seemed to be particularly “cursed” during the films production. But Margaret almost wasn’t the witch. The original casting notice for the witch role described her as a beautiful witch, like Glinda. Margaret saw the casting call and thought, couldn’t be me. Shortly afterwards another casting notice was released describing the wicked witch as ugly, and Margaret snatched her keys right up and ran to the casting session.
I would never describe Margaret Hamilton as ugly, instead I would say she had a specific look that lends itself to character acting. Prosthetics were added to Margaret's face to make the role even scarier, and thick, green paint containing copper was slathered over every inch of her skin not covered by her black dress.
Because of this look, Margaret had to spend the rest of her life rehabilitating her image. She would continue to terrify children even in her civilian clothes, though she was known to everyone as being incredibly kind and gentle. Margaret made multiple appearances on Mr. Rogers later in life to prove to children that she wasn’t really a witch.
Ok, If you’ve seen the movie, I want you to think back to the first scene the wicked witch appears in. There’s a moment where she’s screaming at Dorothy, rightfully so might I add, dorothy just vehicular manslaughter her sister. It’s the part where she says I’ll get you my pretty, and your little dog too. After she threatens Dorothy she turns away and starts walking towards a red plume of smoke that’s already started rising from the floor.
It’s coming from a platform that’s been camoflauged into the brick. Margaret was supposed to stand on it, it would start going down, and then a giant swell of fire would billow from the area, and the witch would be gone.
In the movie, it looks seamless, the Witch effortlessly disappears behind the cloud of smoke, but this was an incredibly dangerous stunt. The platform was so narrow that Margaret had to tuck her arms in tight and hold the broom perfectly vertically to fit through it. You’d never guess by watching, but she ended up in the hospital because of this shot.
The timing of this stunt was all wrong. You can see it when the smoke starts that the trap door opened too early, before Margaret was standing on it. She jumps on the platform, but it’s way too late. By the time the platform brings her under the stage, the fireball has already erupted, catching Margaret in the middle of it.
Immediately, her face and hat catch fire. And remember how I said the makeup she was wearing was copper based? The copper, being metal, started heating up in the fire, meaning that even after someone smothered her face to put the fire out, the makeup was so hot it kept burning her. Her face was covered in second degree burns, and still burning, so a makeup person whisked her away, brought her into a bathroom and started scrubbing the makeup off of Margaret. To be sure that it was removed from every single pore and that they weren’t going to infect the burns, the makeup team used rubbing alcohol to remove it.
Other cast members remembered hearing her screams as the makeup was scrubbed vigorously from her face.
Margaret was whisked away to the hospital so her burns could be treated. That night, when she came home, she told her son’s nanny to tell him that she had a new costume she was trying out. A mummy costume. And he shouldn’t be afraid when he sees mommy. Her son remembered coming into her room and seeing her bandaged all over her body, only two slits for eyes letting him know she was in there. He could tell something was wrong, but Margaret didn’t want to upset him.
After a few weeks of rehabilitating, she was feeling much better and returned to set. That first day back, the director told her she was going to film the scene where she writes a message in the sky using her broomstick. To do this, she’d have to sit on the broomstick while a small, gasoline engine was started next to her legs, which would emit the black smoke
Absolutely NOT! Margaret shouted. She was not about to try her luck after what she just went through. Instead her stunt double agreed to sit on the broom stick for the shot.
Sound started rolling, the director called action, and in the first take, the small gasoline engine exploded into thousands of small metal shards, sending the stunt double to the hospital.
The history of the Wizard of Oz is dark, but is it cursed? Was it some supernatural force that made the fake snow out of asbestos, or lack of understanding? Sure, some people still swear there’s a ghostly image of a hanged actor in the back of a scene, but others will tell you it’s a bird and always has been a bird. Others say that if you buy an original copy of the movie you can still see the corpse, before they realized he was there and swapped out the take. It’s unlikely, but it makes a good sleepover story.
Then there was the legacy of Judy Garland, the bright eyed brunette Dorothy. The girl next store who grew up to struggle with addiction. She fought her demons with the arsenal she was trained to use from a young age, and historians have noted that these struggles may have started on the set of the Wizard of Oz.
Judy was just 15 when she was cast, and her body started rapidly changing once production started. The studio did everything they could to maintain her girlish figure, they strapped down her chest with binders, and they fed her a myriad of pills to keep her weight down. At the time, and I talk about this in the morbid medicine episode, these pills were full of amphetamines. Judy would be so wired after set she couldn’t sleep, so the studio had a doctor prescribe her sleeping pills, full of barbiturates. So this teen girl, at the start of her career, was being given speedballs by her employer.
Later in life, when Judy went on talk shows, she would tell stories that rewrote some of the history of the movie. Her view of set had soured over the years, and she claimed that the other actors tried to push her out of the way when they’d link arms and skip, and the actors playing the munchkins were drunks who would fight and were hyper sexual.
History seems torn on these accusations. Some say Garland was harassed by the actors playing munchkins on set, and others say people had preconceived notions of little people in that time.
But when I watch her on youtube giving these late night tv anecdotes in the 60’s, I see a woman who is trying to make sense of the way her life turned out. Who maybe knows the wizard of oz was the root of the problem and is searching for the words to explain that. . Maybe, in a way, she does feel like the set cursed her to have a life of addiction struggles.
The next movie I want to talk about, deals with a curse in a different way, a much more literal way. It’s a movie that showcases the devil, and may have paid a price for that. The Exorcist, after the break
I want to take you back to 1949 in Cottage City, Maryland. A town so small it doesn’t even cover a square mile.
There, A young boy, known publicly for years only by an alias, Roland Doe, is experiencing something strange.
For the last month or so, there seems to be an evil following him around. It started small, knocking around his room at night. The feeling that someone was circling his bed. but lately, when Roland lays down to sleep, his bed will move across the room. He knows latin though he’s never studied it. It feels like someone is inside of him, taking over his body.
His parents are worried but they don’t know what to do. This feels beyond their control. So, they call a priest.
According to Roland, this all started when his aunt Harriet taught him how to use a Ouija Board. She was a spiritualist and was interested in contacting the dead. Initially, she told him it was a game. They would play with it at night to See what it would spellv out, as if it were a crossword. But Harriette started telling Roland about other ways that spirits can communicate with him. Like tapping. Sometimes a spirit can make tapping sounds to signify something to you. Soon, the tapping noises were happening outside of their sessions, when Roland and his grandmother were in the house.
After hearing this story, the priest believes that Roland is possessed. The ouija board must have brought something into the house. Where is Harriett? he asks. But Harriett cant help them, she recently died unexpectedly. The priest knows this is serious, and he gets to work on exercising the demon he believes resides in the boy
An article is published in the Washington Post after the priest successfully exorcizes the demon from Roland. It took between 20 and 30 times, and each time Roland would throw tantrums, screaming in Latin and thrashing about. But eventually, the boy was declared free from demons.
A young college student gets his hands on the article, and he’s in awe. He spends the next few decades thinking about this story incessantly. It keeps him up at night. That man was William Peter Blatty, and he’d go on to write the script for the movie The Exorcist, based on this event.
So when the movie went into production, there was already all this lore, all of the stories about a young, nameless boy in Cottage City who had been possessed by the devil. The cast and crew were reenacting a real time the devil came to Maryland, and many people felt that the darkness from the real life case had made its way into production.
Production on the movie broke ground in August of 1972 with a few changes from the original story. The biggest one being that Roland was rewritten to be Reagan, a young girl suffering a possession, played by Linda Blaire.
Around the time that production started there were a few suspicious deaths related to the cast and crew that caught the media’s attention. Linda Blaire’s grandfather passed away, One of the special effects experts died, Max Von Sydow, who plays father Merrin, lost his brother on the first day of production. Two of the actors whose characters die in the movie, Jack MacGowran and Vasiliki Maliaros, passed away shortly after production wrapped. The assistant cameraman’s newborn died during production. The nightwatchman and a crewmember that watched over the sets refrigeration system also died. Many claim these deaths were mere coincidences, though it is a high number of deaths in less than a year. I’ve worked on a few movie sets and no one has died during production, let alone 8 people.
Then there was how a bird flew into a circuit box early on in production, leading most of the set to catch fire. As if that weren’t enough to spook some of the crew, The only part of the set to not catch fire was Reagan's Bedroom, the room the possessed girl would reside in.
It was at this point that a priest was called to do a blessing on set. Production was starting to feel a little nervous about what they were filming and they thought it’d be good to shake some holy water on the whole operation. It was this blessing that inspired sets like Annabelle Comes Home to do blessings
After I read this part I thought to myself, surely nothing else happened after this point. The production had already been plagued by disaster, there can’t possibly be more to this.
But, similar to how Roland wasn’t saved until multiple exorcisms, the first blessing of the set seemed to not do anything.
See, The director, William Friedkin was known to push the actors to get what he wanted. This included emotional and physical stress to get the performances he felt were best for the film.
There’s a scene where Reagan is thrashing around in her bed, the possession causing her body to writhe and flop around. This is an exaggeration of what happened to Roland, by the way, he was never described as moving this erratically.
To show the supernatural hold on the girl, Linda Blaire was sewn to a plank that would shake and thrash wildly, allowing her to move faster and more erratically than she could do on her own.
However, there was one take where something went wrong. Linda became untethered from the device, and as it flung her around, her back wasn't supported.
In the scene, Linda is being whipped back and forth and back and forth by the device, a device, mind you, which was being operated by adults and may not have been calibrated correctly for a child. You can hear her screaming as she’s being thrown about, and according to Linda, everyone thought she was “acting up a storm”. It wasn’t until they called cut and her screams continued that they realized her back had been fractured by the device. That was the take that was used in the movie.
Ellyn Burstyn who played Reagan’s mother also suffered injuries during production. In one scene, she’s thrown backwards. To achieve this, she was tied to a rope that was controlled by a stunt coordinator. He would tug the rope to pull her backwards. For one take, William Friedkin pulled the coordinator aside and told him to really go for it in this take. After he called action, the stunt coordinator pulled Ellyn back harder than he had on any other take, causing her to fall backwards and hit her head hard on the wall behind her. This, also, is the take that was used in the film.
These are some of the events that are brought up when talking about how cursed the movie is. But Was it a result of the devil’s intervention, or was it strictly human? The deaths and the fire feel out of control, but the actors injuries seemed completely preventable.
Regardless, all of this was used as marketing fuel to show that the movie actually was cursed. And when the movie came out, audiences would faint and throw up during the movie, some unable to make it more than 10 minutes in. It seemed like the cursed element of the film was pushing audiences to the theater.
Some religious zealots said that even showing the movie would invited the devil into the theatre, but that just made people want to go MORE. They wanted to be able to tell their friends they made it all the way through the movie. The catholic church, however, signed off on the film because they thought it was a good representation of the evil that exists in our world. Perhaps they also saw this as good marketing for them. Look at what the power of the lord can save you from.
There was one thing that wasn’t brought up at the time as proof of the curse. And that’s because no one realized it until years after the film. But there is a murderer in the movie.
There’s a scene where Reagan’s mother takes her to a hospital to have some brain scans done, hoping that they’ll get some answers. In the scene, two x-ray techs attend to Reagan. And these are real X-Ray Techs, not actors. When William Friedkin was casting the film, he really did go to Tisch hospital in new york to find a real hospital and real staff to use in the film.
One of those men is Paul Bateson. He’s softspoken and gentle in the film, he even makes a small joke to Reagan to make sure she’s comfortable.
[darker music, more ambient. tense]
But on September 22nd, 1977, Reporter Arthur Bell gets a call from a stranger. He sounds softspoken and gentle on the phone, and though Bell didn’t know it at the time, it’s Paul Bateson.
“I Killed Addison” the voice on the other end says.
(that can be the effect of someone on the phone)
Arthur had been looking into the death of Addison Verrill, a film reporter for Variety. Addison had recently been added to a long list of unsolved murders of gay men in Greenwich Village. He was found dead in his apartment the morning of September 14th, 1977.
“Who is this?” Arthur inquired
“I can’t tell you. I’m gay and i needed money and I’m an alcoholic. But i’m no psychopath”
The caller went on to confess that he met Addison at a gay bar earlier in the evening and went back with him to his apartment. But he felt like Addison didn’t like him enough, he was looking for a long term partner and Addison clearly wasn’t. So around 8am the next morning, after a night of drinking and doing various drugs, he hit Addison over the head with a frying pan and stuck a knife into his chest.
But the caller said some things that peaked Bell’s interest. He said things like “I’d like to atone but I don’t want to give myself up. I wouldn’t be able to practice again. I’d lose my license.” So Bell got the feeling that whoever was calling him worked in medicine.
The police were quickly able to connect the phone call to Bateson, and he was arrested and sentenced to 24 years in prison. Police unsuccessfully tried to connect him to several other murders of gay men in Greenwich Village, it seems like he only committed this one.
Later in his life, however, William Friedkin visited him in prison. He told Friedkin that there was another body. Someone he dismembered and put into trashbags. That person was never found and no other murders were tied to Bateson.
His whereabouts now are currently unknown but an obituary for him has not been posted. Meaning he’s possibly still out there.
Does any of this mean that the set of The Exorcist was cursed? what do you believe, was the movie really cursed, or was it a series of unlucky coincidences that lead people to believe that?
To answer that, maybe we look to the case that inspired the movie. The real identity of Roland doe was recently revealed after he passed away in 2020. His name was Ronald Edwin Hunkeler, and he never identified himself after the event for fear that he would never be left in peace if people knew who he was.
But Ronald’s story is a happy one. He went on to live an incredibly successful, well adjusted life after the exorcism. He grew up to be a Nasa engineer, working on the apollo space missions of the 60’s. He died just before his 86th birthday in Maryland, close to where the devil visited him last.
Whether it’s the devil or just a dark history, I think of these stories often. I personally think curses can mean a few different things. For some, a curse means being followed by a dark energy set on destroying you. But I would argue that it doesn’t have to be supernatural. A modern interpretation may say that yes, the Wizard of Oz set was cursed because it precipitated a dark cloud above Judy Garland that followed her throughout her whole life. Or yes, the exorcist movie was cursed because of the lasting effects that were born on set.
Or maybe it’s something ancient that’s really been here before all of us, lurking in the earth and waiting to rear its ugly head if we make the wrong move. Regardless, I’d rather have the priest on set, just in case.
This has been heart starts pounding, written and produced by me, Kaelyn Moore. Sound design and Mix by Peachtree Sound. Shout out to our new patrons who will be thanked in the monthly newsletter, which you can sign up for on our website.
Special thanks to Travis Dunlap, Greyson Jernigan, the team at WME and Ben Jaffe. Have a heart pounding story or a case request? Check out Heart Starts Pounding.com. Until next time, stay curious.