One of the most famous horror franchises, The Exorcist has become a household name and inspired countless more films and stories on posessions and evil spirits. It's only fitting that this classic in the horror genre is held up as a masterpiece of cinema.Ask any horror fan and they'll tell you: the Exorcist is the single most terrifying film of all time. It was a film so singularly horrifying when it was released in 1971 that audiences were fainting and vomiting in theatres, and yet the story was so masterfully told that it became the first horror movie to be nominated for an Academy Award. The story seems simple: a young girl begins acting strangely, and when psychiatrists can't help her mother calls in two priests, one of whom is suffering from a crisis of faith. As the entity possessing the girl grows in strength they are forced into a confrontation. Director William Friedkin pulled out all the stops so that what could have been a standard potboiler became a masterpiece: sublimin