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The other night I began a rewatch of The Exorcist II: The Heretic. It has been 40 years of so since I last watched this sequel to the fantastically successful The Exorcist and most of the film had slipped into the forgotten realms. (Not surprising even 40 years I was unimpressed, and this is often considered the weakest film in the series.) Release in 1977 this movie has many of the hallmarks of cinema of the 70s, particularly genre films and their fascination with psychic powers or it was nearly always referred to then, ESP.

Now Science-Fiction’s love affair with ESP well predates the 70s, Star Trek’s original pilot The Cage fixates on it and it is the foundation for all of the weird and fantastic stuff in Herbert’s Dune. It is in the 70s that this shit exploded across television, film, and books.

ESP and its associated ‘powers’ seemed to erupt in all sorts of fiction even when it was terribly mismatched to the genre. The Devil’s Rain a supernatural horror film about a coven of satanist and the struggle to possess a vital artifact utilizes, in addition to magical powers granted by the lords of hell, ESP in it plot. In the novel The Exorcist Father Karris must exclude by proof that the objects moving about in Regan’s room are not being manipulated by telekinesis. Psychic powers are so assumed to exist as part of the natural world that they have to be eliminated before he can move on to demonic possession. (This bit was wisely dropped from the film’s script.)

ESP showed up in SF films, soap operas, and horror films with amazing regularity. This fascination vanished fairly quickly in the 80s with the study of psychic ability being coded for ‘con man; in Ghostbusters. The 70s were a wild ride.