The Exorcist (1973)

The cultural conversation around the film, which also encompassed its treatment of Roman Catholicism, helped it become the first horror film to be nominated for the Academy Award for Best Picture, one of ten Academy Awards it was nominated for, winning for Best Adapted Screenplay and Best Sound. It was the highest-grossing R-rated horror film, until the release of It in 2017

Lankester Merrin, a veteran Catholic priest who performed an exorcism in the 1950s, is on an archaeological dig in the ancient city of Hatra in Iraq. There he finds an amulet that resembles Pazuzu, a demon of ancient origins with whose history Merrin is familiar.