The controversial Seventies spinechiller that was banned from your TV set for 28 years is even better in the director's cut with 11 extra minutes of footage, including one absolutely brilliant devil special-effects sequence, and a splendid spring clean-up of the now stereo soundtrack and visuals. Hurrah, it seems 'modern' again, with all its horrid grainy look wiped away and the pacing's improved with the re-edit. One British critic has called director William Friedkin's movie 'the best film of all time', which its distributors Warner Bros proudly used as its trailer. It isn't, of course, but it is a sharply focused sizzler that, Seventies fashions and the odd nasty zoom shot apart, easily stands the test of time both as a quality, intelligently scripted movie and as a firecracker burn-in-hell shocker. Ellen Burstyn, nominated for an Oscar for her performance, is quite dazzling as a distraught film actress mom told by a priest (Jason Miller) that her daughter (Linda Blair) is possessed by the Devil and needs the urgent services of an exorcist (Max von Sydow). With its Oscar-winning script by William Peter Blatty, based on a real-life case from the Forties, this is still brilliantly scary stuff that exercises the strongest of strangleholds over your inner-most soul. Just to warn you: with its slew of swearing and explicit scenes involving little Linda, it's still a shocker after all these years.