The Last Exorcism has been in theaters for a week now and, according to Rolling Stone‘s Peter Travers (who gave it three out of four stars), the film “delivers the heebie-jeebie goods.”

Producer Eli Roth talked with Reuters last week and, unsurprisingly, had a thing or two to say about mental illness.

I say “unsurprisingly” not because Roth’s father was a professor of psychiatry at Harvard University, but because whenever a movie of The Last Exorcism‘s theme comes out, it’s pretty common for a link related to mental illness to show up.

In this case, the link was there before the movie was even a twinkle in Roth’s eye:

Q: Your latest film, “The Last Exorcism,” is about a young woman possessed by the devil. Can that really happen?

A: “Having been raised by a psychiatrist, I was told anything psychological was a mental illness. Then I saw (the 1973 feature) “The Exorcist” and it changed everything. It really freaked me out. I told my dad, ‘What’s this whole possession thing you’ve never told me about?’ He said, ‘Don’t worry about that. We’re Jews. We don’t believe in that.’”

Check out the rest of the interview to find out how Roth views exorcisms now, and for more information about The Last Exorcism, visit the official website.

In the meantime, have you seen the movie?  What’d you think? If not, do you plan to?

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    Last reviewed: 3 Sep 2010