By Ben Reiser

Writer Mike McPadden currently resides in Chicago, where his encyclopedic knowledge of exploitation movies of all types and his winning way with double entendres and sex-based puns had served him well as editor-in-chief of the website, Mr. Skin. These days Mike is doing a ton of freelance writing and has had two books published within the last year. His most recent tome, Heavy Metal Movies is informative and entertaining in exactly the ways I’ve come to expect from McPadden.

For a recent blog post on death and taxes, Mike has compiled a wonderful list of movie clips featuring screen tests and unused alternative early versions from a wide gamut of films that were then famously revised. Included in this list is some super cool levitation test footage from The Exorcist. Check it out:

More to the point, I’ve never seen The Exorcist in a movie theater. Not sure how that happened but I’m gonna fix that this Wednesday night, October 8 at 7 p.m. when the Cinematheque and WUD Film present the 2000 re-release version as part of the Cinematheque's William Friedkin series.