“Breathing new fire into the old cliches that war is hell and love of money is the root of all evil, American soldiers have found a way to wrest Western capitalism out of the Iraqi sands where part of Hollywood’s most popular devil movie was filmed…

Last month, Capt. Nik Guran of the 2-320 Field Artillery Regiment, a ‘major unit’ of the 101st Airborne Division stationed in the small Iraqi town of Hatra, inserted a copy of The Exorcist in a portable DVD player. As the film began, Guran had the weird realization he was sitting at the location where director William Friedkin shot the opening sequence of his 1973 horror classic.

‘He recognized the sun temples,’ Friedkin recently said by phone from Hollywood.

‘And then the Army hatched this idea,’ Friedkin continued, ‘to turn the whole area into a tourist attraction and call it ‘The Exorcist Experience.”” —Houston Chronicle [via walker]