A closer look
Production on the 1973 horror masterpiece The Exorcist was delayed when a mysterious electrical fire burned almost the entire set of the MacNeil house to the ground, leaving only the possessed child's bedroom completely untouched by the flames. This deeply unsettling coincidence convinced the already exhausted and terrified cast and crew that the project was genuinely cursed by a demonic entity, prompting the director to bring in an actual Jesuit priest to bless the rebuilt set. The studio naturally weaponized this horrific on-set trauma, leaking the stories of fires, severe injuries, and nervous breakdowns to the press to market the film as the most dangerous movie ever made. It shows the sheer psychopathy of seventies Hollywood, where a catastrophic workplace hazard that almost killed multiple people was just treated as a fantastic opportunity for a free publicity campaign to sell more movie tickets to terrified teenagers
