All right, here's my question for this week. You know how you go to McDonald's or Burger King and, when you get there, you look at all these LINES, right, and you try to choose the shortest one, but no matter which one you choose, it's the wrong one, and then when you finally get to the front of the line, they never have what you want and so you have to stand to one side, between two lines, in LINE LIMBO, and everybody thinks you're trying to break into THEIR line, and so you're nervous, and while you're waiting there, your extremely intelligent uniformed attendant is NOT WATCHING the burger slide. You know, there's a little burger slide up there, and when your Double Cheese Fish Thingy is ready, it slides down this metal chute, but your attendant is waiting on somebody else and so she doesn't SEE IT come down the chute and so some OTHER jerk fast-food employee grabs it and gives it to HIS anxiously waiting person in Line Limbo. And you don't wanna say "Hey, turn around, look, Burger Chute Alert," because it wouldn't do any good, and it would probably hack the person off, because you KNOW they're not moving fast enough ANYWAY to get over there and get it. And so, 20 minutes later, you trudge out of there with your pathetic little bag, and you're already EXHAUSTED from jostling for junk food. You know?

Well, on the block where I live, I noticed recently that there's an Armenian deli right next door to the fast-food place. One of those places that sells every kind of convenience store product, PLUS incense, PLUS raw meat, plus cold cuts, plus fish, plus those casseroles that nobody ever buys that have strange-colored potato salad in em. And the counter on this place -- every square inch is COVERED. Ginseng bottles, condoms, key chains, Advil. There's just one little two-square-foot area. And TWO GUYS run this place. Adnan and his brother Gyorgy. Adnan is the boss and Gyorgy is the slave. All right, here's the thing. The Armenian deli sells NINETY-TWO different sandwiches. I counted em. He has em listed on a big board behind the counter. NINETY-TWO. INCLUDING all the sandwiches sold at the national chain burger fast-food joint next door. He specifically COPIED those sandwiches as a competitive measure. Adnan has a Veal Cutlet Parmigiana sandwich. McDonald's doesn't have a Veal Cutlet Parmigiana sandwich. Burger King doesn't have a Veal Cutlet Parmigiana sandwich. AND they're cheaper. AND, whichever of these 92 sandwiches -- or 12 salads -- that you order, it's served to you in, like, TWENTY SECONDS! You can't get the money out of your pocket before it's on the counter. Adnan yells at Gyorgy, "Meatloaf Moussaka Pepper Steak Sandwich!" And Gyorgy is afraid of being thrown into a Turkish prison or something, because he JUMPS on that coldcut counter, slices it, puts on the mustard, wraps it up, bags it, slaps it on the counter, and usually Adnan has to WAIT on the customer to give him the money. And it's a GREAT sandwich. Always. Now. One out of a hundred people go to the Armenian deli. Everybody else goes to the fast-food joint. Why? That's my question. Why?

And speaking of freaky unexplained occurrences, what do you think of when I put the following two concepts together: Horror Film, and Green Pea Soup. Yes, that's right. It's time for . . ."The Exorcist." Upchuck Jubilee. This movie made such a pile of money when it came out in the seventies that it launched the career of Linda Blair, and Ellen Burstyn as her mama, and, of course, Father Damien Karras, played by Jason Miller. The original. Let's check the drive-in totals: Four dead bodies. Gargoyles. Weejee board. Catholic virgin-defacing. Levitating bed. Closeup neck injections. Multiple spinal taps. Crotch-crushing. 360 head-swiveling. Green vomit to the face. Abdominal carving. Eyeball-rolling. Holy water Fu. And, of course, Exorcism Fu. Four stars. Let's go.

[fading] "Gyorgy! Extra mustard! Now!" I truly believe that, if you went into this place and asked for filet mignon, Adnan would say, "Gyorgy! Run! Get filet mignon!" Ten minutes, tops, you'd have filet mignon. Why aren't these guys millionaires?

The unhappy priest is Jason Miller, of course. Jason was actually VERY happy at the time he made this movie, because he had just won the Pulitzer Prize and a bunch of other awards. He wrote a play called "That Championship Season" that was a big hit on Broadway and has been playing ever since at regional theaters. This was his first film as an actor. Even though Jack Nicholson desperately wanted the part, the director, William Friedkin, chose Miller. He said "I just can't see Jack Nicholson as a Catholic priest." So he went with the unknown guy. Unknown for acting. The studio also wanted Audrey Hepburn as the mother, but Friedkin wouldn't take HER either. Instead he hired Ellen Burstyn, who had been nominated for the Oscar for "The Last Picture Show" the year before. She got nominated again for this role, and then she WON the Oscar for "Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore" in 1975. Anyhow, Ellen was 40 years old when all this stardom happened to her. She'd been working for years, kept changing her name, kept trying different stuff. When she was 18 years old, she changed her name to Edna Rae and become a model. Then she worked in a Montreal nightclub chorus line under the name Keri Flynn, Then she got a screen test in the 1950's and changed her name again -- to Erica Dean. Then she got a part in a Broadway play and changed her name to Ellen McRae. Then when she got married for the third time, she took the name of her husband, which was Burstyn, and she's been that ever since. Nominated for Oscars five times, won the Tony, ran the Actors Studio for five years. Dated our producer. Who HAVEN'T you dated, David? For that matter, who hasn't SHE dated? Two or three seasons ago she starred in a show on Broadway where she was a nun trying to become a priest. Wasn't real hot -- closed pretty quick. But this is by far her most famous role, as the stressed-out mom of Linda Blair, in the movie that caused a sensation in 1973, "The Exorcist." Okay.

[fading] People would throw up when they went to see this movie. People fainted. People claimed they had to have psychiatric help after they saw it. SEVERAL people used it as a murder defense. "I don't know why I killed him, but it was right after I saw that movie." It started the whole "devil made me do it" thing. You really can't use that anymore. "I don't know what got into me, honey." You're implying that the DEVIL got into you. When, actually, some hormones got into you.

All right, well, we're watching the buildup here to what became the most popular horror film of all time. There have only been two horror films, really, that caused the whole country to go nutzoid. One was the original "Frankenstein" in 1931 starring Boris Karloff, and the other was "The Exorcist" forty years later. Same thing in both cases -- people getting sick, having to leave the theater cause they couldn't stand it. Newspapers full of articles about it. And neither one of those movies is really based on a horror story. "Frankenstein" is based on the novel by Mary Shelley that was written around 1820, and "The Exorcist" was based on a novel by William Peter Blatty that was a study of a REAL case of exorcism in 1949. He stayed really really close to the actual facts in the case, and they had Jesuit priests on the set to ensure accuracy. What we know is that the boy was 14 years old, and lived in Mt. Rainier, Maryland, which is just across the line from Washington, D.C., and it took many exorcisms to get the devil cast out of him. First he was worked on by the Reverend Albert Hughes, the assistant pastor at St. James Catholic Church, and they took him to Georgetown University Hospital to do it. But he seriously wounded the priest with a bedspring wire, and so they had to call in another priest -- William Bowdean, a Jesuit from St. Louis. He did the exorcism rite for about three months before he pronounced the boy free of the devil. So Blatty was able to piece it together. And he protected the identity of the boy by changing him to a girl. Fortunately for Linda Blair's career. Okay, more than you wanted to know. Sorry -- but this is a milestone in horror film history.

[fading] 3210 Bunkerhill Road. Mt. Rainier, Maryland. House where the kid lived. Every once in a while you'll see articles about that block -- a huge number of people who live there have died violent deaths. The house was vacant for many years and then it burned down during a fire department training exercise, but the AREA keeps having these murders. I mean, you could get real spooked by it, but then you go, "Wait a minute. It's Washington, D.C." I mean, let's go two blocks over and see if we don't get the same stats, you know what I mean?

Oh, GOD! That closeup spinal tap scene! Even William Peter Blatty couldn't watch that scene. He said he watched it one time when the film was being edited, and he never watched it again. Everybody THINKS that the audience got sick during the actual exorcism. NO. THIS is the place in the movie when people fainted and asked for their money back and had nightmares. Obviously we've gotta edit a few things out to show this on basic cable TV, mainly the frequent use of the f-word by Linda Blair when she gets injected with the drug and when the doctors try to touch her. She cusses like a psycho sailor all through this movie, and a lot of it is gross and sexual, and there were even articles written at the time saying a 13-year-old girl shouldn't be allowed to say that stuff in a movie. When she gets REALLY nasty, it's not her voice, though. It's the voice of Mercedes McCambridge, who can make all KINDS of amazing sounds. We know her from the movies -- Giant, Touch of Evil, Suddenly Last Summer, All the Kings Men -- but back in the thirties Orson Welles said she was "the world's greatest radio actress." So she KNEW how to do frightening noises. Plus William Friedkin put all kinds of SUBLIMINAL noises in the movie -- stuff that's on the soundtrack but you don't know where it's coming from, stuff to just make you NERVOUS. After all, you don't see her get actually po-sessed until about 40 minutes into the flick, but you're already DANG NERVOUS, you know? Okay, now we get REALLY nasty. Roll it.

[fading] I'm sorry. I'm really sorry we had to cut out the words Linda Blair says. Normally I would go argue with the high sheriffs about it, but this wasn't even close. Imagine what it would sound like if you slowly cut off the fingers of . . . Joe Pesci and Jack Warden. Imagine what would come out of their mouths, and THAT'S what she says.

Oh, MAN. Linda Blair puts the old Iron Claw on the shrink's frijoles you believe that William Peter Blatty, the guy who wrote the novel and the screenplay for "The Exorcist," was basically a COMEDY WRITER? I mean, NOT ANYMORE. He was, like, this guy who was considered a master of the light sixties comedy. He wrote "A Shot in the Dark" for Blake Edwards -- I think that was the first Pink Panther movie. He wrote humorous pieces for The Saturday Evening Post. He wrote movies like "What Did You Do in the War, Daddy?" and "John Goldfarb, Please Come Home" and "Promise Her Anything" and "The Great Bank Robbery." And the studios would never let him write anything serious. "Oh, William Peter Blatty -- comedy guy." And then that kind of frothy sixties comedy dried up, people weren't making em anymore, and so Blatty was out of work. So in the summer of 1969 he got a cabin up at Lake Tahoe and started writing "The Exorcist," based on this article he'd read in The Washington Post back when he was a student at Georgetown University in 1949. It becomes a best-seller, the movie's the top-grossing horror film of all time. Three or four years later, a studio head is having a meeting. They're discussing a comedy they wanna make. Blatty's name comes up. "William Peter Blatty! The guy who wrote 'The Exorcist'! You want me to hire him for a COMEDY?!" So he doesn't get THAT job. Don't you just love Hollywood. They think they know sooooooo much. And now, after the commercials, we return to that quaint little romantic comedy, "The Exorcist."

You know this movie's still banned on video in England? You know Billy Graham made SERMONS against this movie? Which is strange, because the Catholic Church cooperated all the way on it. Catholics love it. Catholics love gloomy stuff. Makes em happy. Last time I said that I got a letter from a Catholic organization. "We're appalled! We're offended! You wouldn't have made those remarks about Jews, or blacks, or Hispanics." Yes I would. Here, I'll make it easy on you. [holds up sign] JoeBob at turner dot com. OR www dot tnt dot turner dot com forward slash joebob. Or do it the old-fashioned way: 1010 Techwood Drive, Atlanta, Georgia 30318. Fire away!

So here we are, an hour and five minutes into the movie, and somebody finally says "What about exorcism?" That's what makes the movie so great. We're already scared shirtless here and we haven't even STARTED into the exorcism part. And Linda Blair is freaking everybody out. I had Linda on my show a few years back, and she said that, while they were making the movie, she didn't really pay much attention. They told her, "Here, go spend three hours in makeup. Here, let us strap you into the bed. Here, smile at Jason Miller. Here, now OPEN WIDE!" And it wasn't until the movie came out and every weirdo in the universe started coming up to her in the street that she realized -- Oh, the DEVIL WAS INSIDE ME! And they LIKE that. Linda was nominated for the Oscar for this performance, and then she did TV movies through the seventies. Remember "Sarah T.: Portrait of a Teenage Alcoholic"? Then she did some of the best B movies of the eighties -- "Hell Night," "Savage Streets," "Chained Heat." The immortal "Roller Boogie." She blames "Chained Heat" for ruining her career. She said nobody took her seriously after she made that. But she's still getting a few jobs. Lives up in Connecticut. Rides horses. Like, professionally. Show horses. Okay, let's watch her now in the scenes that made cinematic history. And I have only two words to say: Yuk. Yuk.

[fading] And before you even ask me. Yes, it WAS pea soup. Green pea soup. Not Campbell's. Anderson's pea soup. And Linda said she hated vegetables at the time, so it DID make her throw up. See, you wouldn't learn this on The Family Channel.

Well, we had to take out a BUNCH of Mom's cuss words in that scene with the priest. AND it might have been a LITTLE difficult to see exactly what Linda Blair was doing in that scene where we get the spooky head-swivel. But she had a crucifix, and she was repeatedly stabbing herself in the himminyhomminyhastalapasta with it while saying some very nasty sexual things to Mom. Do you get the picture here? I know it had some jump-cuts in there. Believe me, the jump-cuts are our FRIENDS. If we didn't have the jump-cuts, Jesse Helms and Newt Gingrich would be here, right now, on this set, putting handcuffs on me. You know what I'm saying? I thought so. Okay, let's get to the dang exorcism, okay? I think this priest is ready to boogie.

[fading] This has gotta be William Friedkin's best movie, don't you think? Either this or "French Connection." He spent a whole YEAR making this thing. Including a whole MONTH in Iraq, shooting that thing at the very beginning, at the archeological site -- what was that, four minutes of film? A month just on the spooky gargoyle thingy. You know, they were on expense accounts. Maybe they just wanted to spend a little time by the pool at the Baghdad Hilton.

They just don't make projectile-vomit like they used to, do they? That projectile-vomit still plays after all these years. Actually, the on-screen puking was done by a girl named Eileen Smith. And when they were making the film they asked her to please not tell anybody that they were using a stunt vomiter. But then later she got upset that Linda Blair was getting all the attention for what was rightly HER VOMIT, so she sued the film company, trying to get vomit credit. True story. Anyway, Max Von Sydow is here. Time to get ready for the big battle to the death with the day-uh-vil himself. The actual exorcism takes about 15 minutes of screen time, but it took THREE MONTHS to shoot it. And William Friedkin was such a stickler for detail that he shot it in a refrigerated room. When you see this scene, it's actually ZERO degrees in there. They would cool the room down to 10 below zero, then when they turned on the lights and started shooting it would WARM UP to zero. But it's worth it, as you'll see, as Max Von Sydow takes on the devil in the conclusion of "The Exorcist."

[fading] Everybody talks about the great makeup job Dick Smith did on Linda Blair in this movie. He did JUST AS MUCH makeup on Max Von Sydow. Max was only 43 years old when he made this. He looks at least 83. Course, he made all those Ingmar Bergman movies where you spend two hours watching bored Swedish people yell at each other. That'll make you old.

Whenever I see the end of "The Exorcist," I always wonder whatever happened to Lee J. Cobb. The creepy detective who's always hanging around. You don't see him anywhere in the last part of the movie. Are we assuming he just doesn't care to know how the two priests died? Anyway, the movie was originally 20 minutes longer, but William Friedkin cut it way down in the editing room, and ever since then the writer, William Peter Blatty, has been kinda ticked off. He keeps BEGGING the studio to put out a special cut with the original footage in, but Friedkin doesn't like the idea, so it probly won't ever happen. Blatty's mad cause a couple of scenes were cut out that he thinks explain more of the story. Like WHY the devil chooses to possess a 12-year-old innocent girl. It's still one of the greatest horror movies ever made, and it spawned two sequels, which are among the WORST horror movies ever made.

All right, next week on "Joe Bob's Hollywood Saturday Night," we've got what some people consider the best Stephen King movie ever made, "The Shawshank Redemption," starring Tim Robbins and Morgan Freeman, and then on our second feature, the ever popular "Trading Places," with Eddie Murphy and Dan Aykroyd. And I guess that's about it for me, Joe Bob Briggs, reminding you that it's lonely at the top, but you eat better.

All right, I've got a Catholic joke. One day a Cardinal requests a private meeting with the Pope. He says, "Your holiness, I have some very bad news. Due to some unfortunate financial dealings the Mafia have us in a very vulnerable position. We owe then 500 million dollars. The Don says he will wipe the entire debt on one condition. He wants to watch you having sex with a young woman. If you do that, the entire debt will be cleared. He gives me his word." Well, the Pope doesn't like this. He protests. He asks if there's some other way. But eventually he realizes there's no alternative except to comply with the Don's wishes. So he says to the Cardinal, "I will do this thing on three conditions. The first is that the young woman must be blind so that she cannot see who is doing this dreadful thing to her. Second, she must be deaf so that she cannot hear who is doing this dreadful thing to her." Cardinal says, "Of course your Holiness, and what is the third thing?" Pope says, "She has to have enormous breasts." Joe Bob Briggs, reminding you that the drive-in will never die.

[fading] Did you hear about this foreign lady who was married to an American? Well, she was not very proficient in English, but she manages to communicate with her husband. But a problem arose whenever she had to shop for groceries. One day she goes to the butcher shop and wants to buy turkey legs. She doesn't know how to make her request, so in desperation, she lifts up her skirt to show her thighs. The butcher gets the message, sends her home with turkey legs and thighs. Next day, she needs to get chicken breasts. Again, she doesn't know what to say, so she unbuttons her blouse to show the butcher her breasts. The lady gets what she wants. The third time, this poor lady needs to buy sausages. So she brings her husband to the store. Because . . . he can speak English! Shame on you!