‘The Exorcist’ set was its own horror movie: deaths, fire, more

With this weekend’s release of “The Exorcist: Believer,” filmgoers will once again witness young, possessed girls blaspheming, shrieking and levitating as their parents try to wrest a godless demon from their bodies.

What they likely won’t see, however, is their fellow audience members fainting, vomiting and fleeing the theater in terror.

That chaotic scene was what was widely reported to have happened all over the world when “The Exorcist” hit theaters nearly 50 years ago in December 1973.

In early 1974, a security guard at a Midtown East cinema described screenings of the horror flick to the New York Times. He said that there had been several heart attacks and one miscarriage at the venue.

The paper also reported that “soon after ‘The Exorcist’ opened, an usher at the theater fell under a subway train and lost an arm. Then the mother of a cashier died.”

All pure coincidence, perhaps. But well before the movie’s release, during its way-behind-schedule, more-than-200-day shoot in Manhattan, elsewhere in the country and abroad, there were so many similarly spooky happenings that many believe director William Friedkin’s petrifying classic was cursed.

Actors and crew members perished, a huge fire shut down production for more than a month and star Ellen Burstyn, who returns in the new film as Chris MacNeil, severely injured her back.

“Friedkin called me and said, ‘Can you come down and exorcise the set?’” remembered Father Thomas Bermingham, a technical advisor, in the 1998 documentary “The Fear of God: 25 Years After ‘The Exorcist’.” “I said, ‘No, Billy, no. I don’t want to increase anxiety or anything like that.’”

Instead, the man of the cloth gave “The Exorcist” team a blessing. They needed one.

Friedkin, who died in August at age 87, said his first brush with “bad karma” during production came when the statue of Pazuzu — the film’s evil spirit — didn’t arrive in Mosul, Iraq, as planned. The prop, which was built in and shipped from Burbank, California, mysteriously wound up in faraway Denmark instead.

“It was lost,” the director said onstage at a 45th anniversary event. “We couldn’t start shooting in Iraq for three or four weeks.”

A more treacherous delay happened later at 20th Century Fox’s then-studio on West 54th Street, where a fiery blaze enveloped the MacNeil house set in the early hours of the morning.

The incident freakily occurred during the period that they were filming the famous exorcism scene. 

“The production manager called me at 4 a.m. and said, ‘Don’t bother to come to work today,’” Friedkin remembered at the talk. “I said, ‘Why? Am I fired?’”

The production manager told him, “No, but the set has just burned to the ground.”

Not the whole set, though. The majority of the home was built separate from Regan’s bedroom where the exorcism takes place. Chillingly, the house was no more — but the site of the horrifying religious ritual survived.

The accident, it turns out, was caused by a pigeon that flew into a light box. After six weeks of rebuilding, filming resumed.

Burstyn’s poor back didn’t fare so well. 

“[Friedkin] was always great with me,” the actress told author Peter Biskind in the book “Easy Riders, Raging Bulls: How the Sex-Drugs-and-Rock ‘N Roll Generation Saved Hollywood.” “Except when he permanently injured my spine.” 

During the shocking crucifix scene with Linda Blair in bed as the possessed Regan, the disturbed daughter whacks Chris in the face, forcing her backward. A stuntman with a wire attached to Burstyn’s waist would then rapidly pull the actress toward the wall.

Burstyn, who was 40 during the shoot, recalls being pushed to the brink filming the punishing sequence over and over again. 

After three tries, Burstyn finally said to the director, “Billy, he’s pulling too hard, ask him to lighten up.”

“Well, it has to look real,” Friedkin replied. 

She was right. On the fourth take, the actress landed so hard on her coccyx she yelped in excruciating pain. Friedkin, Burstyn claimed, then seized upon the genuine moment and put the still-rolling camera on her. 

“I was furious when he did that, exploiting the pain I was feeling,” she said. “Since then, I’ve always had trouble with my back.” 

While no accidents during filming of “The Exorcist” were fatal, many people involved or associated with the production died during it. Reports range anywhere from four to — the number Burstyn recalls — nine people passing away.

“There were nine deaths, which is an enormous amount of deaths connected with the film,” she said in “The Fear of God.” “Some very directly, like the actor Jack MacGowran, who gets killed in the film, completed shooting and died.”

MacGowran played Burke Dennings, the film director who is killed by Regan. The Irish thespian died of influenza at age 54 during the London flu epidemic.

Burstyn went on: “The assistant cameraman whose wife had a baby during the shoot — the baby died. The man who refrigerated the set died. The young black night watchman [died].”

And Vasiliki Maliaros, who played the mother of Father Karras (Jason Miller), also passed away during production in February 1973 at age 89. 

Joe Hyams, the movie’s publicist, was unnerved by all the unexpected loss happening around him. 

“These weren’t casualties from stunts or things like that. These were men standing behind the camera and all of a sudden dropping dead,” he said.

After all this trauma, how on God’s green earth did Universal and director David Gordon Green get Burstyn, now 90, to return for the new reboot?

“A lot of money,” she told the Hollywood Reporter.