Friday Face-Off: Scary Freebie!
Welcome to The Friday Face-Off, a weekly meme created by Books by Proxy! Each Friday, we will pit cover against cover while also taking the opportunity to showcase gorgeous artwork and feature some of our favorite book covers. If you want to join the fun, simply choose a book each Friday that fits that week’s predetermined theme, post and compare two or more different covers available for that book, then name your favorite. A list of future weeks’ themes are available at Lynn’s Book Blog.
This week’s theme is:
“Any scary you like!”
~ HALLOWEEN FREEBIE
Mogsy’s Pick:
The Exorcist by William Peter Blatty
Halloween is almost here! To celebrate, I’ll be featuring the classics on Friday Face-Off for the full month of October. This week, we’re closing off the month’s spooktacular covers with one of the scariest books of all. Two years before it gave rise to the hit film adaptation, The Exorcist novel was published in 1971 by William Peter Blatty (who also ended up writing and producing the movie) after he was inspired by the events of a 1949 case involving the exorcism of a 14-year-old boy who was alleged under demonic possession. Here are some of the covers:
From left to right:
Harper & Row (1971) – HarperTorch (1994) – Harper Paperbacks (2011)
Bantam (1984) – Corgi Books (1999) – Faber & Faber (2000)
Italian Edition (1974) – German Edition A (2001) – German Edition B (2019)
Bulgarian Edition (2012) – Lithuanian Edition (2017) – French Edition (2016)
Spanish Edition A (1972) – Spanish Edition B (2007) – Georgian Edition (2017)
Polish Edition (2017) – Russian Edition A (2016) – Russian Edition B (2017)
Portuguese Edition A (2017) – Portuguese Edition B (2016) – Finnish Edition (1988)
Winner:
There was one cover that immediately grabbed my attention, and that was the Georgian edition. There were many disturbing scenes in the movie, but the upside down crab walk that was cut from the original but added back into the extended 2000 version always gets to me.
But what do you think? Which one is your favorite?
The BiblioSanctum 
Totally agree with you, and it’s a great cover
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Glad you agree! 😀
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You and Tammy are on the same wavelength once again. However, there’s so many different covers here. I think the one you chose is super eerie. It’s probably the scene in the movie that terrified, and stuck with me, the most.
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Haha yep, there’s something for everyone!
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I can’t believe we picked the same book again, lol. Luckily there are so many covers for this book we have a lot of different ones. I still love the Portuguese 2016 the best😁
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I know! What are the chances 😀 Great minds!
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Your pick is the one that made my skin crawl as I was scrolling down through…definitely agree!
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Yeah, thinking about that scene always gives me the creeps!
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So many different covers, and each one of them showing a different degree of “scary”…
I like your choice – it’s a frightening image, indeed – and also the Bantam edition with half of the girl’s face morphing into something… else. (((shudder)))
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Yes I know the one, I found it quite disturbing when I first saw it as well!
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That was a creepy scene, indeed! Great pick for a scary book, can’t think of a more appropriate one. I’m also pretty freaked out by the Portuguese Edition A.
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Yeah, I found the Portuguese covers just a little TOO disturbing!
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Haha – I love that you and Tammy chose the same book but there are so many covers available that it’s still great to see them all.
That creepy staircase cover has given me the serious hebejebes. Wasn’t that the scene that’s famous for being cut from the film?
Lynn 😀
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Yep, though I believe the reason they cut it was because back then they didn’t have the tech to remove the wires in post production that was holding the stunt woman down those stairs, and so it looked too fake 😛
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I think I like the French one best, but I like your choice, too.
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The French one is nice – elegant in its simplicity 🙂
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Yes, I agree. 🙂
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Again, really disappointed in these covers
But the Portuguese for me
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Haha, yeah there are a few nice ones here, but you’d think for a book that’s been around for so long there would be a lot more.
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Some of these covers are really freaky although I suppose that’s not surprising for a horror story. My dad’s copy of Misery had a cover that always tended to freak me out 😅
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I like the Corgi cover best with the priest arriving at the creepy house-that was the cover of the copy I had many years back.
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Another one I haven’t read, the movie is pretty terrifying though. I remember seeing it when it was re-released in theaters (omg, has it been 18 years already???) and the audio is scary as hell in theaters with surround sound. *shivers*
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ooh I love your pick- it’s so unique!!
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Great choice for this week! There are some really creepy covers!! I think I like the Portuguese Edition B (2016) best!
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