Night of the Exorcist

Produced by the long defunct Metromedia Producers Corporation (now a part of 20th Century Fox Television), it’s understandable that Cougar Video re-titled the film from the lacklustre She Waits to something more titillating, but Night of the Exorcist is just misrepresentation of the highest order. Oscar winner Delbert Mann produces and directs this TV-movie tale of vengeful ghostly possession from a rather colourless script written by the long-serving Art Wallace. Additionally, the performances from the cast are not helped by the unsuitable and occasionally jarring score from composer Morton Stevens, who’d previously found fame via the theme tune to Hawaii Five-O.

Mark Wilson (David McCallum) and his new bride Laura (Patty Duke) decide to spend some time at Mark’s childhood home, much to the anxiety of his mother, Sarah, a nervy widow who lives alone but for the family valet, the aged Mrs Medina (Beulah Bondi).

That very evening, Laura is awoken by the sound of a sobbing female voice, and the following day intermittently hears a melancholy tune from an old musical box. It comes to light that the old house hides a shady secret: Mark’s first wife, Elaine, died two years previously in puzzling circumstances. The highly-strung Mrs Wilson begs Laura to leave, confessing that Elaine was actually shot dead by her son after a heated row, and it was herself who rigged the murder to make it look like suicide.

Laura’s behaviour becomes stranger and stranger until it appears that she has become possessed by the dead Elaine — returning from the spirit world to avenge her own death. But is it really Mark who is the guilty one?