Post by Eddie Love on Jun 27, 2011 20:51:02 GMT -5
William Freidkin’s landmark horror picture THE EXORCIST grabbed audiences by the throat and didn’t let up with its potent mix of religion and ghastly shocks. The film still stands as a classic and each year generations of young movie-watchers rise to the challenge of their first viewings. Not surprisingly this blockbuster was followed in 1977 by a sequel: EXORCIST II: THE HERETIC directed by John Boorman and it’s truly a jaw-dropping train-wreck. Hated by audiences upon its release; it’s said to have been booed off the screen on its initial showings. It's hard to imagine what people were thinking when they made this. In some ways it's one of the most ambitious sequels ever. And certainly one of the worst.
The plot here concerns a globe-trotting, firebrand priest (Richard Burton) being tasked with investigating the death of Lancaster Merrin (Max Von Sydow) the titular cleric of the previous film (or was he?) who is, we’re told, being branded a heretic in death -- even a Satanist (hunh?) -- by some close to the Pope. Burton was an acolyte of the dead priest and is an exorcist in his rite (sic joke). Indeed, when we see him in the film’s opening scene he’s battling a demon himself with cataclysmic results. (And if you stopped watching the film there, you could be forgiven for holding this in better regard.)
Anyway, he’s asked to get to the bottom of what happened during Merrin’s final dance with the devil. To do this, he travels to NYC where Regan McNeil, the tormented child from the earlier film, is under the care of a psychiatrist played by Louise Fletcher because Ellen Burstyn was too smart and classy and too big a star to return in this sorry mess. No wait!!!! I mean,…because at the behest of the child’s mother the good doctor wants to get at the heart of what happened to the troubled girl some years back! To do this she employs a ridiculous contraption that facilitates some sort of mind-meld between patient and doctor and allows us to return to some creepy recreations of much better scenes from the earlier film. The tormented priest takes it upon himself to cure the -- possibly saintly (?) -- Regan and go after the demon he knows still plagues her.
Okay, so that’s the slender reed this sequel is built on and from the get-go we have a few problems:
1) The exorcism in the first film was fully sanctioned by church officials. The notion it’s now being investigated, rather than simply covered up if there’s any concern about it, makes no sense. (The matter-of-fact procedural aspects of the first film in terms of the church’s actions is part of what makes it great. The tired, expository melodramatics here are what make this stillborn.)
2) The devil in the first film is a reckless badass. Why would he now kick back and wait out the years to take re-possession of Regan who, by the way, we hardly see him menace at all?
3) The main character of the first film is Father Karris played by Jason Miller. The story of that film concerns his struggle with his faith and his ultimate confrontation with, and victory over, Satan. He is not mentioned or alluded to once in this movie. Zero. As in never. Instead all the time it’s Father Merrin, Father Merrin, Father Merrin. WTF?
Anyway, Linda Blair returns as Regan and she’s now modestly cute, but lacking in charm and not much of an actress. And I’m not sure how old she’s supposed to be, is she a girl or a woman? We see her performing a little tap-dancing routine with what looks like…what?.. her junior high school class? Elsewhere, she’s constantly shown in diaphanous gowns and finally in the picture’s wretched climax she’s an out-and-out glam-ed up temptress trying to entice Burton into bed. (This is immediately preceded by a scene where the priest takes teenaged Regan back to his seedy Times Square flophouse for a little afternoon mind-meld. Creepy much?)
And, God, you can tell Burton is just hating life here. I don’t care how much he was drinking, it can’t have been enough, and you’ll feel like pouring him a bracing whiskey yourself. He’s tasked with all the heavy lifting and he’s stiff and stentorious throughout in scenes that play into his worst instincts. Kitty’s back (Winn that is) who played Regan’s mother’s assistant in the first film and she has some creepy, foreboding bits that never really pan out. And, like much of the cast, she sounds to have been re-recorded, as well.
The first film opened with a long doom ladened passage of Merrin at an archeological dig in Iraq that was steeped in rich evocation of that setting. This film tries for something similar in the mid section set in Africa. These scenes include a vivid set piece in a “rock church” perched high among some mountainous cliffs and only arrived at by climbing through a crevice of about two feet of space. Okay, these bits are kind of cool. And though Freidkin’s film was completely naturalistic in its location-shot Middle Eastern scenes, much of Boorman’s African sequences play out on impressive soundstages evoked in a canning, moody production design.
These African scenes get at the heart of the film’s central conflict and reveal the demon who’s still vexing Regan. He’s some sort of locust beast (don’t you hate those?) named Puzoozoo (sp) and the young boy who earlier threw off the yoke of his possession, with Merrin’s help, is Kokumo -- played as an adult by James Earl Jones. (And if you think listening to Richard Burton desperately intoning in his magnificent, keening voice about Puzuzu (sp) and Kokumo makes for plentiful unintentional laughs, you’re a lot savvier than whoever greenlit this movie.)
Jones imparts to Burton the mystery to this demon’s possession having something to do with grasshoppers and locusts, but trust me – you won't give a rat's ass by this point in the film. And this conceit points to another epic fail of the picture. Unless I’m mistaken, the first film recounted an encounter with the Devil, he’s a kind of a marquee name and we’re all pretty familiar with his work. As for Puzuzu (sp)? Not so much. And we see him literally buzzing around the globe in his locust form and it’s like something out of a cheesy Japanese monster movie. Seriously, you don’t need a priest to rid yourself of this demon, you need a rolled-up newspaper. And in the entirety of this film we never see whatever-the-shit-this-thing-is wreck any kind of havoc that is likely to get us terribly involved let alone frightened. The stakes here are non-existent.
I once read an interview with Martin Scorsese (possibly in the late lamented American Film magazine) where he hailed this as one of his favorite horror films. Seriously, Marty? Seriously? I just can’t buy that. I confess as this movie goes along, for all its unwieldy pretentions, I did find something kind of admirable about it’s misguided ambitions. But, I’m sorry, by the time we get to the dreary final twenty minutes and the film’s idiotic climax -- I'm afraid I was a hater. For all the convoluted “rules” of this oh so busy plot, during the overblown finale it is simply not clear what is taking place or why anyone would care.
They're obviously trying to make something standalone, distinctive and original. But whatever that is it's simply not coherent and it's not a horror film. The first film creeped you out with its deadpan realism, this one is shot through with tacky, phantasmagorical bullshit, that I doubt any audience would connect with. Unless perhaps they're taking whatever it is the filmmakers were. That said, no amount of imbibing on your part could render this entertaining, though it’s hard to look away.