Pazuzu (The Exorcist) - AbsoluteAstronomy.com

Pazuzu is a fictional character and the main antagonist

Antagonist

An antagonist is a character, group of characters, or institution, that represents the opposition against which the protagonist must contend...

in The Exorcist
The Exorcist
The Exorcist is a novel of supernatural suspense by William Peter Blatty, published by Harper & Row in 1971. It was inspired by a 1949 case of demonic possession and exorcism that Blatty heard about while he was a student in the class of 1950 at Georgetown University, a Jesuit school...

horror novels and film series

Film series

A film series is a collection of related films in succession. Their relationship is not fixed, but generally share a common diegetic world. Sometimes the work is conceived as a multiple-film work, for example the Three Colours series, but in most cases the success of the original film inspires...

created by William Peter Blatty

William Peter Blatty

William Peter Blatty is an American writer and filmmaker. The novel The Exorcist, written in 1971, is his magnum opus; he also penned the subsequent screenplay version of the film, for which he won an Academy Award....

. Blatty derived the character from Assyria

Assyria

Assyria was a Semitic Akkadian kingdom, extant as a nation state from the mid–23rd century BC to 608 BC centred on the Upper Tigris river, in northern Mesopotamia , that came to rule regional empires a number of times through history. It was named for its original capital, the ancient city of Assur...

n and Babylon

Babylon

Babylon was an Akkadian city-state of ancient Mesopotamia, the remains of which are found in present-day Al Hillah, Babil Province, Iraq, about 85 kilometers south of Baghdad...

ian mythology, where Pazuzu

Pazuzu

In Assyrian and Babylonian mythology, Pazuzu was the king of the demons of the wind, and son of the god Hanbi. He also represented the southwestern wind, the bearer of storms and drought.- Iconography :...

was considered the king of the demons of the wind, and son of the god Hanbi

Hanbi

In Sumerian and Akkadian mythology Hanbi or Hanpa was the father of the more well known Pazuzu. Other than his relationship with Pazuzu, very little is known of this figure....

. In The Exorcist Pazuzu appears as a demon who possesses Regan MacNeil.

Pazuzu is often depicted as a combination of animal and human parts with its right hand pointing upwards and its left hand downwards. It has the body of a man, the head of a lion

Lion

The lion is one of the four big cats in the genus Panthera, and a member of the family Felidae. With some males exceeding 250 kg in weight, it is the second-largest living cat after the tiger...

or dog

Dog

The domestic dog is a domesticated form of the gray wolf, a member of the Canidae family of the order Carnivora. The term is used for both feral and pet varieties. The dog may have been the first animal to be domesticated, and has been the most widely kept working, hunting, and companion animal in...

, eagle

Eagle

Eagles are members of the bird family Accipitridae, and belong to several genera which are not necessarily closely related to each other. Most of the more than 60 species occur in Eurasia and Africa. Outside this area, just two species can be found in the United States and Canada, nine more in...

-like taloned feet, two pairs of wings, a scorpion

Scorpion

Scorpions are predatory arthropod animals of the order Scorpiones within the class Arachnida. They have eight legs and are easily recognized by the pair of grasping claws and the narrow, segmented tail, often carried in a characteristic forward curve over the back, ending with a venomous stinger...

's tail, and a serpentine penis

Penis

The penis is a biological feature of male animals including both vertebrates and invertebrates...

Novels

Pazuzu first appeared in William Peter Blatty's The Exorcist
The Exorcist
The Exorcist is a novel of supernatural suspense by William Peter Blatty, published by Harper & Row in 1971. It was inspired by a 1949 case of demonic possession and exorcism that Blatty heard about while he was a student in the class of 1950 at Georgetown University, a Jesuit school...

in 1971. The novel is about a 12-year-old girl, Regan MacNeil, possessed by a demon. The demon is later revealed to be Pazuzu - though never explicitly stated to be, two references were made about his statue, which was uncovered in the prologue by Father Lankester Merrin

Lankester Merrin

Father Lankester Merrin is a fictional character in the novel The Exorcist , its film adaptation, The Exorcist , and several sequel films...

in northern Iraq

Iraq

Iraq ; officially the Republic of Iraq is a country in Western Asia spanning most of the northwestern end of the Zagros mountain range, the eastern part of the Syrian Desert and the northern part of the Arabian Desert....

. After Regan's mother worries about her daughter being possessed, Merrin and Karras arrive at her house and perform an exorcism

Exorcism

Exorcism is the religious practice of evicting demons or other spiritual entities from a person or place which they are believed to have possessed...

on Regan and successfully force the demon out of Regan's body. In their struggle to free Regan from the thrall

Thrall

Thrall was the term for a serf or unfree servant in Scandinavian culture during the Viking Age.Thralls were the lowest in the social order and usually provided unskilled labor during the Viking era.-Etymology:...

of Pazuzu, both priests perish.

Pazuzu returns in Legion
Legion (novel)
Legion is a 1983 horror novel by William Peter Blatty, a sequel to The Exorcist. It was made into the movie The Exorcist III in 1990.Like The Exorcist, it involves demonic possession...

, wanting to take revenge for being thrown out of Regan's body. He does this by driving the Gemini Killer's soul into Father Damien Karras

Damien Karras

Father Damien Karras, SJ is a fictional character from the novel The Exorcist, its sequel Legion, and their film adaptations.Father Karras was one of the priests who exorcises the demon from young Regan MacNeil. He is a Jesuit psychiatrist suffering a crisis of faith...

's dead body. Although not directly identified as Pazuzu, the Gemini Killer refers to "others" who would see his work continue. In the end of the novel, the Gemini Killer leaves the body of Father Karras when Kinderman accepts that he is in fact the Gemini Killer, satisfied that his work has been recognized and his past avenged.

Films

Two years after the novel was published, The Exorcist
The Exorcist (film)
The Exorcist is a 1973 American horror film directed by William Friedkin, adapted from the 1971 novel of the same name by William Peter Blatty and based on the exorcism case of Robbie Mannheim, dealing with the demonic possession of a young girl and her mother’s desperate attempts to win back her...

was released in theaters as a motion picture. In the beginning of the film, Father Merrin finds a ruined statue of the demon during a dig in Iraq. The majority of the film deals with Regan's demonic possession by a being she initially refers to as "Captain Howdy". The demon is ultimately exorcised out of Regan's body after Merrin dies of a heart attack, and Father Karras

Damien Karras

sacrifices himself by luring the demon into his body and then hurling himself through a window and down the infamous flight of stairs leading down to M Street NW, in Georgetown.

In Exorcist II: The Heretic
Exorcist II: The Heretic
Exorcist II: The Heretic is a 1977 American horror film and the sequel to The Exorcist , directed by John Boorman from a screenplay by William Goodhart and starring Linda Blair, Richard Burton, Louise Fletcher, Max von Sydow, James Earl Jones, Ned Beatty and Kitty Winn...

, Pazuzu is named as the demon and returns to haunt Regan. There are flashbacks of Merrin battling the demon in Regan and also flashbacks of Merrin's exorcism of Pazuzu from a boy named Kokumo in Africa many years earlier. In the end of the film, Regan and Father Lamont, who has been trying to help her, but has become possessed by Pazuzu, return to Georgetown. After a struggle, he declines Pazuzu's offer of power and Regan banishes Pazuzu, appearing in the form of locusts.

The Exorcist III
The Exorcist III
The Exorcist III is a 1990 American supernatural thriller written and directed by William Peter Blatty. It is the second sequel of The Exorcist series and a film adaptation of Blatty's novel, Legion . The film stars George C. Scott, Brad Dourif, Ed Flanders, and Nicol Williamson...

takes place 15 years after the original film. The film was adapted by Blatty from his own novel. Lieutenant Kinderman, who was also in the original film, has been on a murder case about mysterious deaths done by an anonymous person. It is later found out that Satan convinced the Gemini Killer, who died at the same time as Father Karras

Damien Karras

, to inhabit his body as punishment for saving Regan. However, as result of his suicide, his brain was severely damaged, which demons/spirits need when they possess a body. The Gemini Killer spent years stimulating his brain so he would be of use, and then began committing murders by possessing the bodies of the other inhabitants of the hospital where Karras had been staying. In the end of the movie after a turbulent exorcism is done, Karras regains control of the body and asks Kinderman to kill him, which he does by shooting him in the head, keeping him from being possessed again.

In Exorcist: The Beginning
Exorcist: The Beginning
Exorcist: The Beginning is a 2004 prequel to the 1973 film The Exorcist. This is the second version of the third Exorcist sequel. It was adapted by William Wisher Jr., Caleb Carr and Alexi Hawley, and directed by Renny Harlin...

and Dominion: Prequel to the Exorcist
Dominion: Prequel to the Exorcist
Dominion: Prequel to the Exorcist is a 2005 supernatural horror film directed by Paul Schrader. It is a prequel to The Exorcist .-Plot:...

, (two different prequels of The Exorcist
The Exorcist (film)
The Exorcist is a 1973 American horror film directed by William Friedkin, adapted from the 1971 novel of the same name by William Peter Blatty and based on the exorcism case of Robbie Mannheim, dealing with the demonic possession of a young girl and her mother’s desperate attempts to win back her...

) Pazuzu is shown in his first encounter with Father Merrin in Africa

Africa

Africa is the world's second largest and second most populous continent, after Asia. At about 30.2 million km² including adjacent islands, it covers 6% of the Earth's total surface area and 20.4% of the total land area...

in the duel that "nearly kills Merrin," referenced in the very first movie. Although the plot of both of these versions center around Merrin's African exorcism many years earlier, they take a sharp departure from the original scenes in Exorcist II: The Heretic where Merrin exorcises a young boy named Kokumo on a mountaintop. No effort was made to keep the stories consistent beyond that central idea.

Concept and creation

William Peter Blatty's creations of Pazuzu and The Exorcist were based on a heavily reported series of 1949 events in St. Louis, Missouri

St. Louis, Missouri

St. Louis is an independent city on the eastern border of Missouri, United States. With a population of 319,294, it was the 58th-largest U.S. city at the 2010 U.S. Census. The Greater St...

concerning the possession of a 14-year-old known as "Robbie Mannheim" (or sometimes "Roland Doe"). Blatty, who was a student at Georgetown University

Georgetown University

Georgetown University is a private, Jesuit, research university whose main campus is in the Georgetown neighborhood of Washington, D.C. Founded in 1789, it is the oldest Catholic university in the United States...

, read about the story in Washington, D.C.

Washington, D.C.

Washington, D.C., formally the District of Columbia and commonly referred to as Washington, "the District", or simply D.C., is the capital of the United States. On July 16, 1790, the United States Congress approved the creation of a permanent national capital as permitted by the U.S. Constitution....

newspapers and created The Exorcist twenty years later.

Portrayal

Linda Blair

Linda Denise Blair is an American actress. Blair is best known for her role as the possessed child, Regan, in the 1973 film The Exorcist, for which she was nominated for an Academy Award and two Golden Globes, winning one. She reprised her role in 1977's Exorcist II: The Heretic.-Biography:Blair...

played Regan and actress Eileen Dietz

Eileen Dietz

Eileen Dietz is an American actress who is best known for her appearances in many horror films such as the face of the demon in The Exorcist and for her portrayal of characters on the soap operas Guiding Light and General Hospital.- Early life and career :As a child, Dietz appeared in commercials...

was the face of the "possessed Regan."

Make-up effects

There are several scenes in which the viewer can see the face of Pazuzu flashing quickly on the screen in The Exorcist. In his "true form", Pazuzu resembles a rather heavy, gaunt-white face with dark rings around his dull, red eyes and brown, crooked, rotting teeth. The demon mask used in the movie Onibaba (1964) inspired William Friedkin

William Friedkin

William Friedkin is an American film director, producer and screenwriter best known for directing The French Connection in 1971 and The Exorcist in 1973; for the former, he won the Academy Award for Best Director...

to use a similar design for the makeup in the shots. In these shots, the demon is played by actress Eileen Dietz

Eileen Dietz

, who underwent makeup tests for the "possessed Regan", wore one of the alternate make-ups in her role as the demon.

In popular culture

Pazuzu has been featured in numerous spoofs/parodies. A notable example is Scary Movie 2
Scary Movie 2
Scary Movie 2 is a 2001 parody film. It is the second film of the Scary Movie franchise. Though part of the first Scary Movies tagline read "...No sequel," this film's tagline compensated by adding "We lied"....

, in which the scenes of the exorcism of Regan are spoofed in the prologue. The character was also spoofed in the film Repossessed
Repossessed
Repossessed is a 1990 comedy film that spoofs the 1973 horror film The Exorcist. It was written and directed by Bob Logan. The film features the original star of The Exorcist, Linda Blair, as well as Leslie Nielsen and Anthony Starke...

; Linda Blair

Linda Blair

starred in the film and reprised her role as the demon.

In Futurama
Futurama
Futurama is an American animated science fiction sitcom created by Matt Groening and developed by Groening and David X. Cohen for the Fox Broadcasting Company. The series follows the adventures of a late 20th-century New York City pizza delivery boy, Philip J...

, the Professor's pet gargoyle was named Pazuzu.

A statue resembling Pazuzu appears in the Gorillaz

Gorillaz

Gorillaz is an English musical project created in 1998 by Damon Albarn and Jamie Hewlett. This project consists of Gorillaz music itself and an extensive fictional universe depicting a "virtual band" of cartoon characters...

's music video for "Rock It".

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