I Heard the Voice of Satan

I listened to a wonderful episode of CBS Radio Mystery Theater recently, "The Horse That Wasn't for Sale," starring Mercedes McCambridge.

http://www.cbsrmt.com/episode-45-the-horse-that-wasnt-for-sale.html ➚



Who is Mercedes McCambridge? She won a Best Actress Oscar for All the King's Men (1949) and has a long list of film and TV credits. 

She was also the voice you heard emanating from the possessed Linda Blair in The Exorcist, and if you listen very closely to "The Horse That Wasn't for Sale," you will hear an unmistakable echo of that voice when she says the word "death" about half-way through. It's delightfully chilling, an oh-too-brief intersection of genres.

(The Exorcist was released in 1973 and this episode of CBS Radio Mystery Theater aired in 1974, so undoubtedly many listeners at the time heard the echo too.)

Something I didn't know: "The Demon" (aka Satan, aka Captain Howdy, the entity possessing Linda Blair) was a woman - Eileen Dietz. Learn more here: http://captainhowdy.com/2010/05/new-interview-with-eileen-dietz-reveals-shes-writing-a-book/ ➚

Eileen Dietz

Eileen Dietz

I always thought the quick flashes of Satan in The Exorcist looked like Gene Simmons in full makeup but if you look closely, they are are quite dissimilar; understandable though; a perception is a product of its time, and of course in those days most people didn't have VCRs or any other way to stop a moving image on their TVs, so we were left with whatever reactions a split second might leave.