Ashley Bell saved the producers of The Last Exorcism a lot of money. That’s because the star was able to perform the neck twisting and back-bending moves without the help of any special effects. (Source)

“I did it all myself. I wish I could say I’m a hologram but I did it all myself,” Bell told OnTheRedCarpet.com at the Los Angeles premiere of the film. “Now I feel like I’m stuck. Like every time I go to audition for something, I have to do a back-bend and then read the sides.”

So how did the star prepare for her role as a possessed person? “I read every single book I could find on exorcisms that hadn’t been banned,” she said. “Going into it the director [Daniel Stamm] said to watch all the exorcist movies and then don’t do that. So we were immediately set to do something different and go our own way.”

The film’s producer and famed horror director, Eli Roth, stopped and crashed Bell’s interview to rave about her performance. “I want an Oscar stat for Ashley Bell,” Roth said.

“The Last Exorcism” follows Cotton Marcus (Patrick Fabian), a disillusioned preacher and exorcist who hired a documentary crew to expose those who purport to exorcize demons from troubled souls. They head to rural Louisiana, where a young girl (Ashley Bell) is said to be possessed, though Cotton hardly believes any of it. You can, however, bet that things soon turn freaky … and that not everyone is going to live to see daylight. Here are four “Last Exorcism” secrets revealed.

They Made No Cuts to Get a PG-13 Rating
After taking in a screening last week, I was shocked to realize the film wasn’t rated R. It was just too scary to think otherwise. Yet it’s actually PG-13, owing to a lack of foul language and very few bloody moments. But did Stamm have to cut anything out to get that rating? Turns out, they didn’t have to make any changes.

“We never shot for any particular rating,” Stamm explained. “I shot what I thought was scariest. To me, gore isn’t necessarily scary. It’s all about suspense and eeriness. It’s almost like shaking a bottle of Coke and the pressure builds up, but you keep the lid on it for as long as possible. Once you go into gore, you release that pressure and have to start all over again.

“There wouldn’t be any dirty language, because they’re on a farm of this very religious guy,” he added. ” ‘The Exorcist’ is a brilliant movie, but to me a demon is this timeless entity, and if a demon suddenly says ‘f—,’ that destroys the agelessness. I had no interest in having our demon use dirty language. When we were putting it together in the editing room, we thought this might very well be a PG-13 movie.”

There Is Only One Digital Effect
We live in an age of reliance — some might say over-reliance — on computer-generated special effects. But what’s often sacrificed with CGI is a gritty realness, which is why top-flight directors like Christopher Nolan use practical effects whenever possible, despite the often added expense.

Though he was hardly working with a budget on the scale of “Inception,” Stamm used only one visual effect in “The Last Exorcism”: to ramp up an enormous fire. What’s more, he barely used any special effects: one bloody cut, one bloody cow, one bloody cat, and one thing that will remain secret, lest we spoil the movie’s twisty ending.

For the special effects, Stamm recruited makeup effects guru Gregory Nicotero, who’s worked with nearly everyone in Hollywood, including Quentin Tarantino and Michael Bay.

“[Nicotero] sent the cow from Los Angeles in a huge box,” laughed Stamm. “He had his guy on set with the blood pump, who was all prepared to go full-out gore. It’s so tempting when you have a genius like that who can make anything look spectacular, but you always need to remind yourself to use restraint because that’s not the story you want to tell. Also, you don’t want to get into ‘Exorcist’ territory. We didn’t want to use any gimmicks. Our whole movie is based on the idea of whether she’s possessed or crazy, so we couldn’t have her levitate or have her head spin.”

She Did All Those Bends Herself
You can’t walk into a subway station in New York City without seeing the “Last Exorcism” poster: a black-and-white photo of Bell bending over backwards as the purported demon contorts her body. When this happens in the movie, it’s a shocking and scary moment. Turns out that this scene contained not a single visual effect and that Stamm didn’t even know he’d be able to pull it off until days before they shot it.

“She’s double-jointed,” he said. “I had no idea. I just cast her because she was brilliant. Two days before we shot the actual scene, which was planned completely differently, we were in the hotel lobby and I asked her if there was anything she wanted to try during the exorcism. She got up and said, ‘Why don’t I do this?’ and she bent over backwards in the hotel lobby. I ran back to my room and rewrote the scene and now it’s become the core of the movie.

“I made sure Patrick didn’t see that before the scene,” Stamm continued. “The first time he ever saw it was that first take. A lot of the stuff in the finished scene is from that first take because he just couldn’t believe what he was seeing.”

They Studied Horror Movies to Avoid Imitation From “The Blair Witch Project” to “Cloverfield,” Stamm and his team were so adamant that they not repeat anything that’d come before that they watched all of these films and excised any points that felt duplicative.

“We made sure we weren’t doing anything in these other movies,” Stamm explained. “And I also gained new understanding of these movies. ‘Blair Witch,’ when I re-watched it, I realized for the first time what a smart film it is, how it’s so tense and smartly built.”

They did, however, make one exception. The townspeople who talk about myth and superstition in “The Last Exorcism” were directly inspired by the townspeople recounting the legend of the Blair Witch. “We learned a lot from that,” Stamm said.

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#1 “The Last Exorcism” ($9.4 million)
#2 “Takers” ($7.5 million)
#3 “The Expendables” ($2.7 million)
#4 “Eat Pray Love” ($ 2.2 million)
#5 “The Other Guys” ($1.9 million)

“The Last Exorcism” scared up major ticket sales on its opening day. The supernatural horror flick raked in an estimated $9.4 million on Friday. “Exorcism,” which is directed by Daniel Stamm and boasts gore-master Eli Roth of the “Hostel” series fame as a producer, drew enough moviegoers to grab the top spot. The film, which follows a documentary crew in rural Louisiana hired to capture the creepy antics of a supposedly possessed young girl, goes light on digital wizardry in favor of scoring scares with practical effects.

In the second place slot is the star-studded heist flick “Takers.” T.I., Chris Brown, Idris Elba, Hayden Christensen and Matt Dillon work the screen in a story about a crew of suave thieves set to carry out a major job. The thriller snatched $7.5 million in Friday ticket sales.

Sliding to third place is the heavily-armed action fest “The Expendables.” The fiery, butt-kicking flick raised $2.7 million on Friday, after ruling the box office for the past two weeks and sitting comfortably at the top spot. Friday’s haul edges the total domestic tally of the Sylvester Stallone-helmed enterprise near the $75 million mark.

“Eat Pray Love,” featuring marquee vet Julia Roberts, settled into fourth place. The soul-searching movie adapted from the runaway hit memoir of the same name, nabbed $2.2 million in box office receipts on Friday. The loopy cop comedy “The Other Guys” continues to power along, taking in $1.9 million and rounding out Friday’s top movies in the fifth-place slot.

Although “Avatar” wears the crown for the highest-grossing film ever, the re-release of the James Cameron adventure, revamped with previously unreleased footage, failed to crack the top ten with only $1.2 million in Friday ticket sales. (Source)

The Toronto After Dark Film Festival is thrilled to announce the Award Winners of its 2010 edition. A record over 4,300 votes were cast by festival-goers this year to determine this year’s Audience Award Winners!

Audience Awards, Best Feature Film:
1. Gold: The Last Exorcism

Fans Choice Awards, Best Horror Film:
1. Gold: The Last Exorcism

Fans Choice Awards, Best Screen Play:
1. Gold: The Last Exorcism (Huck Botko & Andrew Gurland)

Fans Choice Awards, Best Lead Actor:
1. Gold: The Last Exorcism (Patrick Fabian)

Fans Choice Awards, Scariest Film:
1. Gold: The Last Exorcism

Source

Live in or near Burbank, California, and can’t wait until tomorrow to see “The Last Exorcism”? Then how about checking out a midnight show TONIGHT with producer Eli Roth in attendance as well? Eli took to his @eliroth Twitter account to invite fans to join him as follows:

“Who’s joining me in BURBANK tonight at the AMC 16??? #LastExorcism MIDNIGHT. See you there! Tix here: http://amcurl.com/MaH“

If you make it to the screening, be sure to “tweet” your own review and include the hashtag #LASTEXORCISM.

Sometimes all it takes to turn a movie into a “must-see” is one memorable image. Lately, those memorable moments from trailers and ads have been eye-popping digital effects. Like tidal waves cresting over the Himalayas in “2012″ or giant robots tumbling down the highway in “Transformers.”

This week’s horror movie release “The Last Exorcism” has been garnering much attention with a shot just as impressive as anything from a big-budget blockbuster. The trailer ends with the image of a young woman in a nightgown and boots bent over backwards at an impossible angle. It’s so memorable and unsettling that the studio used it for the movie’s poster. What makes it impressive, though, is that it does not use any special effects. No CGI, no puppets. That shot is actress Ashley Bell bending like that for real.

“The Last Exorcism” uses a documentary-style approach to telling the story of a minister who has spent decades duping people with fake exorcisms. Tired of the deception, he takes a film crew with him to expose the fraudulent practice. But he discovers that Nell, the afflicted farm girl he’s sent to “cure,” may actually be possessed by a demon.

The film is the 24-year-old Ashley Bell’s first leading movie role. She was previously best known for a recurring role on Showtime’s series “The United States of Tara.” Bell comes from a family of actors; her father, Michael Bell, has been doing voices on cartoons like “G.I. Joe” and “The Smurfs” since the 1970s, and her mother, Victoria Carroll, was a founding member of Hollywood’s renowned improvisational comedy troupe, The Groundlings. Bell used both her vocal and improv skills in her audition, acting out an exorcism on the spot and nailing the role.

Producer Eli Roth (“Hostel”) says the goal of the film was to make everything happening on screen look as real as possible, and Bell made that happen: “What you see is one-hundred percent Ashley Bell — we did not use any makeup, CGI, or special effects in her scenes.” Roth went on to say, “it’s all her doing everything you see, down to the bulging veins on her neck and the back bends.”

For the scene where she bends backwards, Bell told the Toronto Sun it took 20 grueling takes to get the shot just right. She joked, “[Director Daniel Stamm] nailed my boots down, pushed me over and yelled, ‘Action!’”

Patrick Fabian, who plays the exorcist, Reverend Cotton Marcus, confirmed that Bell’s performance was just as chilling to watch on the set as it is in the movie. He said, “Ashley would be turning her neck or slithering on the floor and a voice would come out and it just creeped us out. There was no acting involved in there.”

Bell stated that while the film’s shoot was incredibly demanding, she was happy to do it, no matter the physical cost. She said, “I got a lot of bruises and I was so proud of them, like, ‘Yes, war wounds!’”

“The Last Exorcism” opens this Friday. (Source)

Great news everyone! Producer Eli Roth will be sitting down with his Twitter account next Friday to field some questions from @MTVMoviesBlog in support of the August 27th release of “The Last Exorcism.”

I can honestly tell you all that I was taken by surprise at how good the film is. It’s a mock-documentary about a preacher who, for a range of reasons, embarks on a trip to perform his final exorcism. The events that follow are best left unsaid, the better to surprise you when you see it for yourself. Writers Huck Botko and Andrew Gurland crafted a story that takes some surprising turns and director Daniel Stamm does an exceptional job of keeping the creepiness and suspense running high throughout.

Here’s where you come in: WE WANT YOUR QUESTIONS!!! So send them in. Hit us up at tips@mtvmoviesblog.com. Include your Twitter handle if you have one. Stay tuned for more details on our Eli Roth Twitterview, and for some SURPRISE continuing coverage of “The Last Exorcism” all next week! (Source)

Whoever does the marketing for “The Last Exorcism” has outdone themselves. Take a look at this brilliant marketing technique below:

August 27th is a date to mark in your calendars. The Eli Roth produced exorcism film hits theaters and is a front runner on this years “must see” horror films and although the film has been plagued with a PG-13 rating we are still confident this is going to be more than a typical unsettling film. This could be the underground hit of the year and this latest trailer has us even more excited. Feast on it after the break… (Source)

Here’s the very first clip from the Eli Roth produced, Daniel Stamm directed horror flick, “The Last Exorcism”; which comes to us courtesy of Empire.