exorcist

He also happens to be a deliverance minister – more commonly known as an exorcist.

"A bit like ghostbusting, that sort of thing, and a bit of an exorcist as well. Although, we don’t very often do the exorcism, certainly not of people."

And while many insidious and long-reaching national traumas eventually manifest as horror movies like The Exorcist and Get Out, many others curdle into horror of a darker kind because, after all, every person’s dream of a perfect society is someone else’s nightmare.

Linda Blair reprised her role as Regan McNeil, who was possessed by the Devil as a child, but creative differences and the absence of “The Exorcist” director William Friedkin, writer William Peter Blatty and original star Ellen Burstyn were a bad omen for “The Heretic,” which arrived four years after the original.

His many film, television and stage credits over the next half a century included the plays “Fences” and “Paul Robeson,” the Emmy-winning lead in the short-lived “Gabriel’s Fire” and the movies “A Piece of the Action,” “Coming to America,” “Field of Dreams,” “Cry, the Beloved Country” and “Exorcist II: The Heretic.”