Deacon Blues is back with another salute to an artist that exploitation cinema fans adore and mainstream critics love to hate. This time, it’s the Undisputed Queen of the B’s, and Oregon resident, Miss Linda Blair.

Linda Blair grew up in Westport, CT and began modelling and acting at a very young age, mostly appearing in commercials (for things like Gulden’s Mustard) before her breakthrough role in The Exorcist. Miss Blair originally wanted to be a veternarian, but was lured by Hollywood by the promise of raising money to take classes in horsemanship.

For better or for worse, Linda Blair will always be known primarily for her role in the 1973 film adaptation of William Blatty’s supernatural horror novel The Exorcist. The film garnered Miss Blair a Golden Globe Award and a nomination for an Oscar. Her chances at the Oscar were memorably damaged by allegations that she did not do most of the acting on the voice track, and that she had a body double, something that both Blair and the director William Friedkin deny.

Linda Blair followed up her performance in The Exorcist with a string of bad girl roles in made-for-TV movies such as Born Innocent, where she is notoriously raped with a broom handle by a gang of feral teenage lesbians. Soon later she starred in The Exorcist II: The Heretic, a film which garnered Miss Blair a Saturn Award, was widely panned critically, and featured no heretics.

Then came arguably the second most defining event of Linda’s life after The Exorcist. In December of 1977 she was, in an event that would pre-figure the media’s infatuation with teenage stars gone bad, arrested for conspiracy to purchase cocaine and amphetamines. Her career never recovered, and the string of non-hits which followed is largely what her career has been remembered for, if anything, other than her Academy Award nominated turn in the original Exorcist film. Roller Boogie, Hell Night, and Chained Heat are three films which can be placed in what is arguably, for hardcore fans of Linda Blair such as Deacon Blues, her classic period. But audiences had lost interest in the chubby cheeked, sexually provocative girl next door. Savage Streets is perhaps one of the most overlooked genre gems and cultural artifacts of the 1980s. During this period she received three Golden Raspberry nominations (for Hell Night, Chained Heat, and Savage Streets, the last of which garnered her the coveted Razzie).

The latter half of the 1980s was even crueler to Linda than the first half. She was reduced to pure camp schlock such as Zapped Again! and the Leslie Nielson spoof Reposessed. Even a recent resurgence of interest and the growth of her stock as a cult figure have not paid off in meatier film roles. Deacon Blues for one can’t understand why Quentin Tarantino hasn’t cast her in any of his films yet… except maybe because he’s a total fucking dick.

Deacon Blues highly recommends Savage Streets, Born Innocent, and Roller Boogie as three of Linda’s films that belong in any serious afficionado of b-movies, exploitation cinema, and the popular culture of the 1980s. Mark my words- Linda Blair will come back harder than Vanilla Ice. In fact, I’m quite surprised that she hasn’t already. Look for the upcoming Rick James (whom Linda dated for many years and wrote the song “Cold Blooded” about her) biopic to kickstart things for her.