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| Linda Blair is trapped in a pitch black abyss on the poster and in the reality that was John Boorman's Exorcist II: The Heretic |
Regan, the girl who was the victim of a demonic possession by the devil in the original The Exorcist (1973), has in the 4 years since become a well-functioning teenage girl, who now meets a reckless experimental psychologist in a futuristic clinic full of children with Down Syndrome. Meanwhile Father Lamont is sent to her to investigate Father Merrin's exorcism of her in the past. - Was the esteemed Merrin in fact a satanist?
These grotesqueries are merely the start of the astonishingly wretched Exorcist II: The Heretic. William Friedkin, who directed the original horror masterpiece The Exorcist, has called watching The Heretic as bad as seeing a traffic accident in the street, and indeed watching it does feel like witnessing some sort of disaster play out in slow motion. It is probably the worst sequel to a monumental masterpiece ever made; I certainly cannot remember any more abrupt free-fall in quality than this, from the very peak of splendor to the absolute depths of shlock.
Exorcist II: The Heretic awakens feelings of rage, because it isn't just poorly thought up, incomprehensible and shabbily made; it also stomps around on the brilliant Exorcist. It is written by William Goodhart (Generation (1969)) and directed by great English filmmaker John Boorman (Point Blank (1967)). - It is almost unbelievable that the central man behind it, Boorman, made the great thriller classic Deliverance (1972) just years before this. Exorcist II: The Heretic marks an abomination of a movie that he, rightly, could never wipe off his career afterwards.
Many involved should have known better than to work in this mess. Linda Blair (All Is Normal (2008)) may inspire pity, because she was still just a teenager, when she was trapped in this fecal tumbler.
The Heretic is insufferably boring and immerses itself with no limitations in grasshoppers and African mumbo-jumbo that leads nowhere. Louise Fletcher's (A Perfect Man (2013)) descent from her Oscar-winning turn in One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (1975) to this is spectacularly steep, but no-one is good in The Heretic; Ennio Morricone's (The Repenter/Il Pentito (1985)) score is not even good, and the effects just stink.
The biggest reason that this religious horror fails so epically may be that Boorman here actually tried to make a film about goodness.
Related posts:
The Exorcist franchise: Exorcist: The Beginning (2004) or, The Exorcist: Back to Africa!
The Exorcist (1973) - Friedkin and Blatty's masterpiece, one of the scariest pictures of all time
Listen to some of Morricone's score to the film here
Cost: 14 mil. $
Box office: 30.7 mil. $ (North America only)
= Uncertainty - flop status without foreign receipts known, - in reality likely broke even or was a box office success on the whole
[Exorcist II: The Heretic was released 17 June (North America) and runs 117 minutes (North America) and 102 minutes (European cut). Neither Friedkin or William Peter Blatty, who were behind The Exorcist, could come up with a feasible sequel and opposed The Heretic, which Boorman helmed, after he had refused directing Exorcist, finding it 'repulsive'. Ellen Burstyn, who was Regan's mother in the first film, refused to participate. The film became Warner Bros.' most expensive production in its day, partly because the production was barred from shooting at several key locations, which were then recreated at the studio. Shooting took place in Arizona, Utah, New York, Washington, D.C. and in California from May 1976 - ?. The production was fraught with problems: Boorman was sick for a month with a respiratory infection, in which production seized. Kitty Winn and Fletcher contracted gall bladder infections. Rewrites continued throughout production, and the film's editor quit. Richard Burton, who plays Father Lamont, took the job for its paycheck and the studio's promise that he could afterwards do Equus, and was reportedly frequently drunk on-set. Blair was developing a drug habit and also carried this with her on-set. Stories of the film's premieres are notorious: Studio execs attended an early screening at the Chicago Film Critics Festival and had to flee angry audience members chasing them in the street for the lousy film after it playing just 10 minutes. Other premieres caused laughter and fury with audiences throwing stuff at the screens in detriment. - Still, many simply had to see what the ruckus was all about. Boorman recut the film again and again, - with no better results. It opened #2 to a 6.7 mil. $ first weekend in North America. The franchise continued with The Exorcist III by Blatty and released for the first time in 1990. Boorman returned with Excalibur (1981). Exorcist II: The Heretic is rotten at 19 % with a 3.3/10 critical average at Rotten Tomatoes.]
What do you think of Exorcist II: The Heretic?
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