Cyrix’s Codex

Thought it was befitting to start my uni hols by scaring the shit out of myself. So I rented the 1973 classic The Exorcist to do the job It’s also part of my quest to watch as least 50 of the ‘1001 Films You Must Watch Before You Die’, a book I found in Kinokunia in town.

The Exorcist

I’ve heard a lot of hype surrounding this movie for a long time now. Apparently, it was the granddaddy of horror movies. But firstly, let me make something clear. I occasionally enjoy ‘ghost/supernatural’ horror movies, but I absolutely HATE what I call ‘meat and gore’ horror movies. The former include the Sixth Sense, The Others, The Ring, etc while the latter consist of crap such as Texas Chainsaw Massacre, and all the other shit slasher films.

Thankfully, The Exorcist falls in the former category. So, how was the show? A bit slow to start off, for one. First introduced us to a nice mother and her innocent and cute daughter. Then it focused on 2 Catholic priests, an old one and a young one who’s losing his faith because he’s helping everybody but he can’t even afford to take care of his old mother, and so he’s thinking of quitting priesthood to earn the big bucks by being a psychiatrist. Where’s the justice, God? Oh sorry, but I digress.

Suddenly, the nice young girl starts behaving badly, to put it mildly. Started swearing like there’s no tomorrow. *Spoilers!* Scary/shocking scenes: Girl’s face turn all warty and disgusting, voice sounding like the Devil’s, head turns 360 degrees, masturbating with a cross, shoving her mother’s face somewhere down south, sexually vulgar language (unprintable here lah), and a very scary ’spider walk’ where the girl walks down the stairs on fours, with her body facing upwards and her face upside down spewing blood. And lots of green spewing…

Yeap, all in all, it would seem that the Devil loved shocking God’s creations with sexual vulgarity. And you know what? It works man. Violence is so passe nowadays, it’s no longer shocking if the girl just went about biting and hitting people. But heck, a young girl going around telling people that their mother’s doing degrading sexual acts in hell? Wow, that’s just too insulting to be calm about man. And that’s why it works. The possessed girl doesn’t go around telling people how they are gonna be scorched by hellfire, or some poked by pitchforks in hell, but it goes for a more primal element: sex. Because sex is still very much a taboo around the world, I feel that it was very suitable for the girl to use sex as a way of shocking us pristine-pure virginal viewers.

The ending of the movie disturbed many people when it was released. In the end, the both priests died in their titanic battle with the Devil. The old one died simply because he was too weak and also because he was hooked on drugs. The young one went mad, and proceeded to throttled the girl, finally asking the Devil to possessed him instead. It finally did, and he then threw himself out of the window to go to Heaven, leaving the Devil with no body to possessed. Many people don’t like this because it kinda symbolised that the Devil won the battle. But I don’t really think so. I mean, we’re talking about the Devil himself here, and not just any other demon. So I think it was kinda fitting that God needed two of his fine soldiers to beat the Devil.

The special effects did hold up pretty well, considering it was made in 1973. Except for the very fake-looking green spew, that is. I borrowed the special director’s cut edition copy, so apparently it had some additional scenes. All in all, some parts of it were shocking, others slightly scary, but it didn’t really scared the shit out of me. But then again, very few ghost/horror movies do anymore these days.

Verdict:

Hey guys! Just wanna give a few links to you guys who’s actually interested in what’s going on in Malaysia politically-wise. The rest of you, you can go back to voting for your Malaysian Idol and let the minority vote for your PM

Since the Malaysian mainstream news media is so heavily biased in favour of BN, one has to hunt around for more balanced political news sources. I mean, in Australia, for every issue, from university funding to immigration, the newspapers here will always seek the views of both the government and the biggest opposition party. Kim Beazley (Opposition Leader) is mentioned as frequently, if not more, than the PM John Howard in the news here. One look at the Malaysian newspapers: NST, The Star, Utusan Melayu, Berita Harian, and you’d know they’re all a joke. Unbiased reporting learnt by the journalists in journalism school goes flying out the window. There are like 10 news pieces glorifying BN’s achievements to 1 measly critical piece which mentions DAP or PKR! Lim Kit Siang, even though he’s the Opposition Leader, is hardly mentioned at all in the news! Ask any regular Malaysian youth on the streets who Lim Kit Siang is, and 9 times out of 10, they wouldn’t know. I must say congrats to the BN propaganda machine for a job well done then!

So anyways, for alternative political news, there’s Malaysiakini.com. Pity you need to subscribe to it though.

Then there’s the news portal Malaysia-Today. It’s a bit pro-Anwar and PKR, but heck, it ain’t that bad as well.

Another good political news site is Aliran. It’s relatively non-partisan, and it’s very credible. It’s run by human rights NGOs.

Then, we come to the politicians themselves. I think it’s about time we show some support to our hardwoking but much maligned Opposition Leader, Mr. Lim Kit Siang of DAP. He has a blog telling his side of the story here.

DAP MPs seems to be the most proactive bunch of MPs in the parliament. High profile cutie (not trying to be sexist here! Just giving a compliment laa ) MP Fong Po Kuan (DAP) also has a blog here. She’s one of the youngest elected MPs in parliament. Gotta work on her English though.

Next are ordinary Malaysians who blog about politics and such. The most influential is Jeff Ooi’s Screenshots (although I don’t really see what’s the big deal about him anyways).

Lastly, there’s Politics101. A very informative site on Malaysia’s political happenings.

So yeah, check them out to get unbiased political news. “Free your mind”, so to speak, on this issues. And trust me, it’s quite an eye opener