After the MPAA gave The Exorcist an R, Washington barred anyone under 17 anyway and Mississippi seized a theater print, testing how far officials could go to keep children out.
The ratings board said parents could bring teens. Local authorities in more than one city decided that was not enough.
In October 1973, the Motion Picture Association of America rated The Exorcist R, meaning anyone under 17 could attend with a parent or guardian. Studio chief Ted Ashley declined to seek a stricter X. On New Year’s Eve, MPAA president Jack Valenti phoned the ratings board; the R stood. The board’s reasoning, as later described, was that the movie had no nudity and no overt sexuality.
Then the film opened in Washington, D.C., the day after Christmas. What followed showed how quickly the official rating collided with on-the-ground panic, police power, and local law.
Arts critic Roy Meacham watched the early crowds and later wrote about what he saw. Parents brought children as young as 6 and 8. One woman herded 10 kids into a showing. A boy slipped $3 to an adult in line to buy him a ticket. Within hours, Meacham’s co-workers saw a girl removed from the Cinema Theater and placed in an ambulance.
Meacham admitted he personally urged police to see the movie. Sex was not what bothered him.
Mental Floss recounts his line from The New York Times:
"The film’s violence was."
Early on New Year’s Day, after consulting the U.S. Attorney’s Office, the Washington police morals division warned Cinema Theater management that arrests would follow if more tickets were sold for use by minors. A box-office sign went up: “No one under the age of 17 will be admitted.” Parent or not.
Meacham put the break with the ratings system in plain terms:
"Early in the morning on New Year’s Day, Washington became the first city ever to bar children from a film the review board said they could see."
The legal hook was a District code provision barring minors from scenes of certain sexual conduct, “even when the actors are fully clothed.” Police pointed to the two-minute crucifix sequence. The R rating had not settled the question for D.C. law enforcement.
In April 1974, police officers, a justice of the peace, and a district attorney watched the film at the Saenger Theatre in Hattiesburg. They seized the print. Officers arrested the theater manager and the projectionist; those charges were later dropped. Prosecutors went after the company that owned the theater under a state law against “obscene, indecent, or immoral” pictures. The company was convicted.
In January 1976, the Mississippi Supreme Court threw out the conviction. The law was too broad. One justice dissented without having watched the movie or read the book:
"I have neither read ‘The Exorcist’ nor seen the movie."
From the briefs alone, he still called it obscene. The majority refused to let a vague statute do that work.
In Boston, TIME reported that about 5,000 people a day lined up at the Sack 57 Cinema. An attempt to ban the movie ended when a judge dismissed the case. Crowds kept coming. The courtroom door closed faster than the theater doors.
Across the Atlantic, the British Board of Film Classification took a different path. In 1974, BBFC Secretary Stephen Murphy passed the film uncut with an X certificate, which kept out everyone under 18. His verdict was direct:
"It is a powerful horror movie. Some people may dislike it, but that is not a sufficient reason for refusing certification."
That did not end the fight. The Festival of Light protested. A small number of local councils banned the film outright. In Tunbridge Wells, 15 people fainted during the first week at the Classic Cinema; St John Ambulance was put on call.
Home video brought a second round. The movie went out on tape in Britain in 1981. A 1984 law required videos to be certified. The BBFC balked. In its own words, “the protagonist of the film was aged 12, and the film might therefore have appeal to underage viewers.” The tape was pulled at the beginning of 1988. It returned only after the 25th-anniversary re-release, passed uncut with an 18 certificate.
The pattern was consistent. The MPAA’s R told parents they could decide. Washington’s morals division, Mississippi’s obscenity statute, Boston’s ban attempt, and Britain’s video rules all treated that promise as optional when the content was extreme enough to empty seats into ambulances and fill courthouse files.
Some of those moves collapsed under basic legal limits. Mississippi’s law was struck as too broad. Boston’s ban died in a dismissal. D.C. used a sexual-conduct code aimed at a single sequence to impose a hard under-17 lockout the ratings board had not required. Britain’s theatrical pass did not prevent a later video withdrawal built on the fear that a 12-year-old protagonist might draw underage viewers.
Parents brought small children into a film that left at least one girl in an ambulance in the opening hours in Washington. Theater staff faced arrest in Mississippi for showing a movie the national ratings system had cleared for accompanied teens. Officials reached for whatever statute or warning letter was closest to hand.
When Hollywood ships a film raw enough to trigger morals squads, print seizures, and faintings, the country still needs clear rules, not vague bans that collapse on appeal, and not a ratings promise local police can erase overnight. Parents deserve the final call; they also deserve an honest label that means what it says.
