Of the six fleeting earlier glimpses, two are visible if you know where to look (once on an airport conveyor, and once on the hotel “Welcome!” video) the other four, however, consist of one-frame superimpositions of Pitt’s image against the regular scene: (1) next to a photocopier (2) standing behind his doctor (3) beside the group leader at the testicular cancer support meeting, one arm draped across his shoulder and (4) in the alley Marla disappears down. Director William Friedkin denied such images existed for quite some time, until home video releases exposed such denials as fraudulent.īrad Pitt, as Tyler Durden, is formally introduced to the plot several minutes into the film, but but this introduction is in fact his seventh appearance in the film. Probably the most famous classic use of subliminal imagery, The Exorcist includes several two- and three-frame cutaways to disturbing images, most notably several shots of a horrifying pale face (that of a heavily made-up Eileen Dietz) with bulging eyes and sharp teeth, identified by fans of the film as 'Captain Howdy' after the name Regan gives her imaginary friend early in the film. However, the two butted heads over Harris’s corner-cutting, leading to the message’s eventual inclusion in the final picture. Harris, a producer who paid for Carpenter to expand his film from 45 minutes to nearly an hour and a half, convert the picture from 16mm to 35mm and get the film distributed. In this mystery set in the gay nightclubs of New York City, director William Friedkin spliced in a few blink-and-you-miss-them frames from a hardcore gay porn flick during one of the film’s murder scenes.Īt one point in this early low-budget scifi offering from John Carpenter, one of the spaceship’s computer monitors flashes a message for a fraction of a second: 'FUCK YOU HARRIS.' The 'Harris' in question is Jack H. 10 Examples of Subliminal Images in Movies

Subliminal messages in the exorcist