Exorcist II: The Heretic (1977)
Exorcist II: The Heretic (1977)
Before I continue giving this film the critical beatdown it needs, let us rewind and learn how this baffling sequel came into existence. It was 1973, and a little-known film called The Exorcist has released in American theaters to the unsuspecting public. The story of a girl possessed by a demonic spirit and two Catholic priests exorcising her shocked and enthralled audiences to their core. The film caused nationwide revulsion, reportedly causing audiences to vomit, faint, or even have heart attacks. None of these incidents deterred audiences from waiting in long lines and enduring the cold weather to see the film.
The film was a massive success for Warner Brothers, pulling in $193 million at the box office ($1.186 billion in 2021), becoming the highest-grossing film of the year and the highest-grossing horror and R-rated film of all time adjusted for inflation. (This doesn't count the box office gross of subsequent re-releases and the 2000 director's cut.) It won near-universal praise from critics and audiences alike, earning its place as not only the most revered horror film ever made but one of the best films of all time. The film would receive ten Academy Award nominations, becoming the first horror film nominated for Best Picture. (It lost to The Sting but won Best Adapted Screenplay and Best Sound.) The Library of Congress even selected The Exorcist (1973) for preservation at the National Film Registry.
So, after seeing how beloved and influential The Exorcist is to horror fans, academics, critics, and audiences, one must ask themselves, "What were they thinking?" when Warner Bros made Exorcist II: The Heretic. After the immense success of the original and the subsequent success of The Omen (1976), Warner Bros scrambled to make a sequel to repeat this success and cash in on the public's growing interest in supernatural horror films. This decision warrants a red flag, as the original had a story that had been told and had no need for a follow-up. It was perfect as a standalone film, so why make a sequel that exists only to squeeze every last penny dry from the metaphorical cow?
Blatty and Friedkin refused to return, citing their desire to leave the original film as a definitive, standalone movie. This sentiment was mutual with the rest of the cast and crew, who opposed the idea. It's always a bad sign when a sequel doesn't have any of the crew involved with the first film returning, and it has shown time and time again with sequels. (Jaws: The Revenge, Mortal Kombat: Annihilation, Son of the Mask.) Although Blatty and Friedkin tried to write a sequel, they abandoned the project when neither could make a script worthy enough to live up to the original. Blatty, who had written the original novel, wouldn't conceive the idea of a sequel until he wrote Legion (1983) ten years later and directed The Exorcist III/Legion (1990) seven years later.
With the departure of William Peter Blatty and William Friedkin, Warner Bros looked for another director, and their choice is one of the strangest hiring choices I’ve seen. They hired Deliverance and Zardoz director John Boorman, who was offered to direct the original but turned it down due to his disgust towards the script. Boorman accepted the position of director because he wanted to make a sequel that was less violent and nihilistic than the original. He moved away from the dark, dreary terror of the original and take the direction into a lighter, more positive tone. That's nice and all, wanting to make a sequel that wasn't a repeat of the original, but unfortunately, that approach doesn't work with a sequel to The Exorcist, one of cinema's most nightmarish productions.
No one from the cast wanted to return for the sequel, but in the end, three actors reprised their roles for the film. Linda Blair, Kitty Winn, and Max von Sydow reprised their roles as Regan McNeal, Sharon Spencer, and Father Merrin. Blair had refused to return, having wished to pursue a career as a veterinarian, but she returned for two reasons. One, she liked the original script by William Goodhart, and two, she got to work with her favorite actor, Richard Burton. Having on your resume that you worked with a legendary actor sounds cool, but by 1977, it was clear Richard Burton's glory days were behind him. (We'll get to that later)
And here we arrive at the part of the story where everything with this movie went wrong. The film's original script by William Goodhart envisioned this sequel as a cerebral drama with metaphysical themes. He based the idea on the studies and theories of Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, a Jesuit priest and archeologist who served as an inspiration for the character of Father Merrin. The script explored the idea of the battle between good and evil within the human consciousness, wherein the framework of Catholic theology would be brought together as one through technology. John Boorman liked the idea of the script, but when he asked Goodhart to rework it to incorporate ideas from Rospo Pallenberg, Goodhart refused to do it. So Boorman took the script and lobotomized it to the point where the result barely resembled the original script.
The script was being rewritten during production, which did not bode well with the rest of the cast. Rewrites were constant between scenes, with the crew unsure how to write an ending. Linda Blair recalled this by saying, "It was a great script at first. Then after everybody signed on, they rewrote it five times, and it ended up nothing like the same movie."
The tensions were high between the cast & crew, and morale deteriorated so much that Linda Blair showed up late every day doing drugs constantly (She reportedly arrived at the set one day, went up to John Boorman, and perkily announced without irony, "Did they tell you? I was only ten minutes late this morning!") Richard Burton would get wasted during production (He was a notorious drinker throughout his life). It got so bad, that he had to read off cue cards to get through various scenes. If things weren't bad enough, John Boorman got hospitalized after contracting lung disease while shooting the scenes in Africa. Rospo Pallenberg eventually shadow-directed most of the film as an uncredited director and writer. He was credited in the finished film as second unit director and "creative associate". Despite the turbulence of the production, Blair and Burton got along beautifully, forming a father-daughter relationship and Burton quoting Shakespeare whenever he was around.
Richard Burton (1925-1984)
The budget for this film was insanely high for 1977, clocking in at a whopping $14 million ($63.070 million in 2021), which made it the most expensive film produced by Warner Brothers at the time. For reference, Star Wars (1977), which released a month earlier, cost $11 million ($49.185 million in 2021) to make. Half of the budget went into building sets since the studio couldn't get permission to shoot scenes in Georgetown. I assume a portion of the budget went into the salaries of Richard Burton, Louise Fletcher, Paul Henreid (His final film role), Ned Beatty, Max von Sydow, and the voice of Mufasa and Darth Vader himself, James Earl Jones. I can guess the paycheck for these actors must have been high enough to star in this movie, but the money must have been good enough for them to use for a quick paycheck to get a car fixed.
The film premiered on June 17th, 1977, where on its opening night, it caused laughter and condemnation from critics, audiences, and the original cast alike. William Peter Blatty claimed to be the first person who started laughing during the premiere, to which he quoted, "You'd think we were watching The Producers (1967)." Audience reactions soon became hostile, throwing trash at the screen and jeering the film once it had ended. It got so bad they chased Warner Brothers executives down the streets in response to the film. William Friedkin recalls this event when executives were dropped off at the theater by limos and asked the drivers to get food at McDonald's. Ten minutes into the film, an audience member stood up and proclaimed: "The people who made this piece of shit are in this room!" Several audience members stood up and went hunting for the executives in the room, to which the executives decided to make their escape. They forgot the limos were at McDonald's, and angry audience members promptly chased them down the street.
The film barely made a fraction of the original's hefty box office receipts, making just a hair of $30.7 million ($138.3 million in 2021) through its entire theatrical run. While it wasn't a colossal failure at the box office, being able to pull in a decent profit, the results were a far cry from the box office numbers of the first film. The film was so bad, that John Boorman pulled the movie from theaters twice in a last-ditch effort to salvage the film by re-editing it, but it was too late. (More on that later.)
Exorcist II: The Heretic became instantly reviled by William Friedkin along with critics, fans of the original, and William Peter Blatty, each taking turns panning the film. Friedkin denounced the film, recalling the day he watched a rough cut of the film: "I was at Technicolor, and a guy said, 'We just finished a print of Exorcist II, do you wanna have a look at it?' I looked at half an hour, and I thought it was as bad as seeing a traffic accident on the street. It's a stupid mess made by a dumb guy - John Boorman by name, somebody who should be nameless, but in this case, should be named. Scurrilous. A horrible picture."
He would proclaim the film as "The worst piece of shit I've ever seen" and a "fucking disgrace." The late Gene Siskel of the Chicago Tribune called it "The worst major motion picture I've seen in almost eight years on the job". Mark Kermode of The Observer destroyed the film in a scathing review, saying: "Exorcist II is demonstrably the worst film ever made. It took the greatest film ever made and trashed it in a way that was one level farcically stupid and on another level absolutely unforgivable. Everyone involved in this, apart from Linda Blair, should be shamed for all eternity."
The film holds a meager 10% on Rotten Tomatoes with a 12% audience score. The critical consensus reads: "Hokey mystical effects, lousy plotting, and worse acting directly tarnishes the first's chilling legacy." It's the worst-rated film in the series on IMDb, with a horrifying low score of 3.8/10. It earned a spot in Michael Medved's book The Golden Turkey Awards (1980) as the Runner Up to the worst film ever made: Plan 9 from Outer Space (1957). On Metacritic, it holds a 39 based on 11 critic reviews, ranking behind Exorcist: The Beginning (2004) as the worst-rated film in the series. (The film also holds a 10% on Rotten Tomatoes based on 134 reviews.)
If you'd ask me to describe Exorcist II: The Heretic with one word, the answer would be "incomprehensible." The film is a confusing mess from beginning to end, feeling like a mish-mash of ideas shoddily strung together. There are scenes during the film that don't make sense, as if they threw everything at the wall in hopes of it sticking and making the story resemble a somewhat cohesive narrative. The film's opening has Father Lamont (Richard Burton) go to South America to help a girl possessed by a demon. She's a healer of sorts who asks "Why?" repeatedly as Lamont tries to help her by exorcising the demon. The exorcism ends badly with the girl throwing a fit and setting herself on fire, for some reason, as she laughs maniacally along with the choppy special effects of the self-immolation.
And then came the tap dancing scene; We see Regan tap-dancing to a classmate playing the saxophone on a stage for a rehearsal. This scene may be the moment audiences realized they were in for a long night. I can only guess this was the scene where William Peter Blatty started laughing, judging by how out of place it felt in an Exorcist movie. It serves no purpose to the central plot, only coming back for one scene before the movie forgets about it. In an interview, Linda Blair recalled seeing John Boorman approach her and saying, "I think Regan should tap dance in this movie." Blair responded by laughing in his face and said, "Regan ain't no tap dancer."
The film's plot centers on Regan (Linda Blair) four years after the exorcism performed by Father Merrin and Damien Karras. Regan lives in New York with her guardian Sharon Spencer (Kitty Winn), having no memory of the exorcism. Even so, she is kept under vigilance by Dr. Gene Tuskin (Louise Fletcher), who believes Regan remembers the exorcism but has kept these memories repressed. The church sends Father Lamont to investigate the death of Father Merrin, only to discover the demon Pazuzu to return once again to torment Regan. He later finds out Merrin had encountered this demon before in Africa when he exorcised it out of a healer named Kokumo, which prompts him to travel there to find answers.
I have several problems with this premise: the absence of Father Damien Karras, Lieutenant Kinderman, and Chris MacNeal, Regan's mother. These characters played a part in the original's story, particularly Karras, a man who lost faith in the Lord after the death of his mother. This torment, coupled with the loss of his faith, placed a weight on his shoulders, which was eventually relieved when he read a poem of Regan dedicating her love for her mother. Karras then sacrifices himself to save Regan to trick Pazuzu into possessing him, only to jump out the window, dying in the process but successfully expelling Pazuzu from the world. It's a heroic sacrifice for sure, but the sequel treats it like it didn't stop Pazuzu, which is a slap in the face to the original film, the fans, and William Peter Blatty. Nothing in this world boils my blood more than the retconning of a character's heroic sacrifice. It's the same as Anakin's sacrifice retconned and made insignificant in Rise of Skywalker (2019).
The main issue I have with this movie is the denial of the original film. It tries desperately to distance itself from it, retconning events and characters to oblivion and ignoring several events. The New York Times said it best in their review of the film, stating: "It's one thing to carry a story further along, but it's another to deny the original, no matter what you thought of it." You can't rewrite the story in your favor just because you hated the original film. It's petty, disingenuous, and it hurts the movie in more ways than you can imagine.
Going back to the film, Lamont goes to the psychiatric clinic to investigate and ask Regan if she remembers anything from that night. Dr. Tuskin pulls out a "synchronizer" to sync brainwaves to see a flashback of Merrin's death. This "synchronizer" scene is the moment audiences roared with laughter, and it was downhill from there. Aside from the fact this device isn't proven to work that way in the real world, we see a poorly recreated sequence of Father Merrin's death. The scene is silk-screened over Tuskin, where an obvious stunt double plays possessed Regan (Blair refused to don the makeup, so the studio used a body double.) and has a "metaphysical" fight with Regan over Tuskin.
If you look closely, you can see the moment where Louise Fletcher's dignity died onscreen.
This scene is where I realized watching this movie was going to be a painful experience. There were other scenes where I could tell the audience laughed, such as the sequence where Father Merrin beats a burning cardboard box with a crutch or when James Earl Jones appeared as an adult Kokumo, wearing a locust-inspired outfit. There was a scene where a locust appeared in several places before it flew through the air in the fields of Africa. The flight scenes, along with the synchronizer and self-immolation scene, are among the worst special effects I have ever seen. I have never understood what the locust means, and neither does Linda Blair.
I honestly gave up on this movie at this point.
This movie feels like a fever dream, fueled by its flashback sequences to Africa and unrealistic events. It was a dramatic departure from the grounded realism and unexpected terror of the original. The sequel suggests the idea of Pazuzu attacking people capable of healing the sick through mystical abilities rather than targeting the innocent without warning. It diminishes the impact of the demon's terrible deeds in the first film. Pazuzu isn't scary anymore because we are not capable of supernatural healing powers.
Exorcist II: The Heretic is a chore to sit through, and you feel every minute pass. It took me two sittings to watch the movie, even though its length barely scrapes two hours. I constantly checked how much of this movie was left, and I felt like it was an eternity watching the rest of this movie. Scenes drag on for too long and meander where characters face the camera, sometimes going for too long before transitioning to another. It was a relief when the film ended, feeling like it ran for 3 hours instead of its modest runtime of 117 minutes (1 hr 57 mins).
I'm glad he got to star in 1984, before his eventual death.
I was hardpressed to see a talented cast of actors, most of them nominated for Academy Awards, be wasted on a film like this. Richard Burton sleepwalks through his performance in a role that asks little from him, going from one set piece to the other, only to react with indifference to the events unfolding before him. He's visibly inebriated throughout the film, counting the seconds until the movie is over and making it clear he only took this role to pay for his divorce attorney fees. (His divorce from Elizabeth Taylor was taking place at the time). This movie stands as a monument to his career: a talented actor who squandered his talent in low-rent films to earn a quick paycheck. The rest of the cast isn't any better, with Linda Blair phoning in her performance and Louise Fletcher looking miserable in her role, making it clear taking part in this sequel was a mistake for her.
The film concludes with a climactic set-piece where Father Lamont and Regan return to Georgetown to confront Pazuzu. It's here when Lamont encounters a temptress taking the form of Regan, who seduces Lamont to join her in bed. What follows is a scene where Lamont kisses her neck various times before he stops and overcomes the temptation. The scene was originally more graphic and vulgar, with Boorman trying to cram as much offensive imagery as possible. However, Linda Blair read the script for this scene and refused to do it, citing it to be revolting, considering she was 17 and Burton was 52. Burton also refused to shoot the scene, finding it repulsive, given how he and Blair formed a father-daughter relationship. Blair pulled aside John Boorman and told him, "Listen. I don't know what kind of ugliness you have planned here but forget it. It's not happening." The scene was toned down, but the actors remained uncomfortable after they filmed it.
Let's take a brief moment to appreciate this movie has an alternate director's recut. When the film was bombing with audiences, John Boorman pulled it from theaters twice in a vain attempt to salvage it. He reduced the runtime to 102 minutes (1 hr 42 mins) by removing the opening entirely and replacing it with an introduction narrated by Richard Burton. He rearranged and shortened the order of various scenes, changing some music cues, deleted lines of dialogue, and abbreviated the climax by removing the sequence of Father Lamont fighting the temptress, ending instead with Regan leaving the house after the earthquake. This version did not see a proper home video release until Scream Factory released the film on Blu-ray as a Collector's edition along with the theatrical version of Exorcist II (Yes, I bought this movie on Blu-ray for this review.). I call this version "The Less Painful Recut" since it still retains the same plot but is less of a slog to get through.
Damn you, John Boorman.
In the end, Exorcist II: The Heretic lives up to its notorious reputation as the worst sequel ever made. It deserves a spot as one of the worst films ever made, disrespecting the original film by trying to diminish its impact. Despite this, The Exorcist, as with other horror classics, remains an untouchable classic, no matter how many shitty sequels it has associated with its name. The Heretic is a black hole where entertainment goes to die a slow, painful death. I cannot recommend this film to anybody, not even as a movie so-bad-its-good or watch to laugh at it MST3K style. Watching this movie was one of the most unpleasant experiences in my life, and I don't use this term lightly. This movie should serve as a cautionary tale on Hollywood hubris and greed, and how some movies don't need sequels and are perfect as standalone films. Exorcist II: The Heretic sits on my shelf, standing as a monument to shitty filmmaking and a lesson to learn for future filmmakers to take heed.
No copyright infringement is intended with the use of these images. All images belong to their respective authors.
Sources used: Exorcist II: The Heretic (1977) - WTF Happened to this Horror Movie? by JoBlo Horror Videos, IMDb, Interview with Actress Linda Blair from the bonus features of Exorcist II: The Heretic (1977), Collector's Edition by Scream Factory. Exorcist II: The Heretic (1977) directed by John Boorman, and Home Video Cut of Exorcist II: The Heretic (1977)
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