Special effects artist Marcel Vercoutere has died at the age of 87, according to the Los Angeles Times. The Detroit-born Vercoutere worked on a number of notable movies during the ’70s, including 1971′s Robert Altman-directed Western McCabe & Mrs. Miller and the following year’s Deliverance. But he was best known for his contributions to the classic 1973 horror film The Exorcist and in particular for building, with makeup artist Dick Smith, the robot replica of Linda Blair which featured in the scene where the head of her possessed character turns 360 degrees. “She would sit there and look at you in the room,” Vercoutere would later recall of the replica. “It was frightening it was so alive.” According to his son, Vercoutere died on April 13 at his home in Burbank from complications of dementia.
