The Exorcist is often called the scariest movie ever made. Exorcist II: The Heretic has never been called the scariest movie ever made. It has, however, topped lists of Worst Movies of All Time. That is a bit unfair. But Exorcist II is a terrible movie. Don't worry.
The reputation of this movie has done it no favors. Exorcist II has attained kind of a legendary status as the ultimate disaster of a sequel. I've heard stories that this movie inspired riots in test screenings. William Friedkin, director of the original Exorcist, claims that after just ten minutes test audiences were chasing the Warner Bros execs out of the theater. I don't fully believe this story, it might be 70% bullshit. Maybe those audiences saw a different cut than I did. The current version of Exorcist II is not offensively bad or any kind of betrayal of the original. It is just a limp movie that feels incomplete and very unfocused. You don't get angry at a movie like Exorcist II. You're just disappointed and bored.
Describing the plot you'd think Exorcist II is a really wack-a-doo thing. Boorman brings in these Seventies New Age bunk science ideas of hypnotism and shared dreaming. (Interestingly, these crackpot hypnotism repressed memories ideas would manufacture a Satanism scare a few years later.) Having survived her first demonic possession, Regan (Linda Blair) is now sixteen and is getting psychological treatment at a pediatric center built entirely out of SciFi hexagonal glass rooms. Her doctor, Gene Tuskin (Louise Fletcher, Nurse Ratchet) allows Father Philip Lamont (Richard Burton) to interview Regan. Lamont and Regan uncover latent memories about the Assyrian demon Pazuzu and its connection to an African man, Kokumo (James Earl Jones).
I wish I could adequately explain the plot of Exorcist II. You'd think an Exorcist movie would be relatively simple. There should be easy questions like "who is processed?" or "what is the Devil trying to do here?" or "what are the good guys trying to accomplish?" that cannot be answered. Regan is barely imperiled. Nothing much scary is happening at any point. For 90% of this movie the scariest things to happen to Regan is that she trips on stage or she stares over a balcony in Manhattan.
Richard Burton gets to fly out to some striking orange African sets. He wanders through some very cool surreal imagery. This whole section of the movie turns into a narrative dead-end that maybe at best sets up a vague insect metaphor that might explain the ending. Maybe? Kokumo turns out to be a biologist who in dreams appears as a man in an insect hood. There are a lot of locusts - which is Beelzebub than Pazuzu, but whatever.
I believe John Boorman and the writers had a clear idea at some point what Exorcist II was supposed to be. That was lost either in editing or the many rewrites of the script.
It is not until the last twenty minutes where Regan and Lamont go back to her house in Georgetown that anything really scary happens. This is a great sequence. The house set tears apart while Father Lamont rips the heart of an Evil succubus taking Regan's body. A woman sets herself on fire. However, what the fuck does that have to do with anything? Why did they go back to Georgetown at all? Exorcist II is a movie that had no idea how to end. I think even the filmmakers lost track of what they were trying to do by this point.
Why is this movie subtitled "The Heretic", anyway? What heresy are we talking about? Paulicianism? Arianism?
Exorcist II is a slow movie that manages to still be remarkably difficult to follow. Worse, it is a hard movie to even pay attention to. I expect more out of John Boorman. He made Zardoz! This should be so much weirder and fascinating. Exorcist II at least looks great. The African imagery is unique at least. The great Ennio Morricone did the score and it's awesome. But the movie just never came together. Exorcist II is the least interesting kind of failure. What a shame.
Exorcist III, however, rules. Should have seen that instead.
Next Time: Yeah, I'm not risking two big failures in a row. Let's watch something fun. Gremlins 2: The New Batch (1990).
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