The Exorcist (1973)

 

Channel 4’s “100 Scariest Moments” list, #2:

 

 

 

The Exorcist

(1973)

 

This is one of the most influential films ever made, one of Hollywood’s greatest critical and box-office triumphs, which boldly broke new ground in terms of its stomach-churning explicitness yet was at the same time a triumph of subtly on many of the issues it addressed. The fluid mixture of the two reflected Hollywood responding to the emerging maturity exhibited within other venues of Horror cinema that at the time were still mostly regulated to the fringes, and what it achieved was echoed in most substantive Horror films made since.

 

At its heart is the conflict between rationalism and belief, and this being a Supernatural Horror film, we shouldn’t be surprised it sided with belief, but it dealt with the theme with more complexity than virtually any other film before it. Perhaps we should start with the author, because his biography provides some hints of the how-and-why of the evolution of this landmark film.

 

William Peter Blatty was born in 1938 and raised in poverty in a Catholic immigrant household. While he was still a child, his parents separated and he was primarily raised by his strongly religious mother, who had close relatives within the Church hierarchy. Though he initially pursued a career in the cloth, graduating Valedictorian from a Seminary School, he progressively distanced himself from the Church. He became a tremendously successful prose and screenwriter of irreverent Comedic fiction (he had an especially fruitful relationship with director/producer Blake Edwards).

 

He spent many years a lapsed Catholic, and even when closest to the faith, it would be a stretch to ever call him a conservative Catholic at any time in his life, he was married four times. Then, by the end of the 1960s, two things converged that shaped his shift back to the Church, and in his creative out-put, from Comedy to rigorously philosophical and ecclesiastical Horror: the fact that Comedy writing was becoming less lucrative and the death of his mother. The former sent him searching for a new subject, and the latter led him to re-examine the role of religion in his life.

 

While he trained with the Jesuits, he read accounts of Real-World exorcisms, specifically that of a boy referred to as “Robbie Mannheim” which unfolded mostly in Georgetown University Hospital and first was reported by newspapers in 1949. It provided the back-bone for a fiction which was further supported by centuries older accounts, the fiction was the novel “The Exorcist” (1971), which became run-away New York Times Best Seller and was quickly optioned to be a film.

 

Because of his pre-existing relationship with Hollywood he secured the role of producer and was able to exert unusual influence over how the material was handled during its adaptation.

 

The novel is steeped in accurately described Catholic lore, but written at a time when, though Demonic Possession was still accepted as a reality within the Church, it was also at increasing odds Catholicism’s increasing push towards modernization. That tension is ripe in the story, and it opens up, given Blatty’s sophistication as a writer, complex questions about the lines were drawn between delusion and actual Supernatural intrusion, and darker still questions about the cosmic significance of Possession itself – If you believe in an all-powerful and merciful God, how can there be Demons? If we accept that there are Demons strong enough to challenge the legitimacy of an All-Powerful God, how can we explain them being allowed by God?

 

The film version, which was scripted by Blatty and very faithful to the novel, addresses the first question well, the other not so much. Actually, even the original novel also stumbles on the latter question, which might have been part of Blatty’s motivation to return to the subject in the novel “Legion” (first published 1983, more on the later).

 

Despite its incredibly shocking and disgusting effects, it was a “classy” Horror film, a big-budgeted, A-release with philosophical ambitions. To effectively mix these elements, the film made itself a magnificent slow-burn, putting the characterization on more-than-equal footing with the Horror elements. There’s a sinister and longish prologue that obliquely introduces the idea of an ancient cosmic battle as well as the film’s title character, Fr. Lankester Merrin (Max von Sydow), but is so indirect in its telling that many still scratch their heads about this prologue’s connection to the narrative that unfolds afterwards.

 

We then switch both countries and characters and are introduced to a stable and loving, though challenged, family led by an affluent single-mom whose daughter, at first, seems happy and well-adjusted. There are some mild hints that the uncanny is intruding in their lives, but it is almost 40-minutes in before the first really strong scene suggesting Possession, and at that point it looks more like an emotional disturbance than Supernatural causes. Further, we’re nearly at the one-hour mark before the first killing, which happens off-screen. This is important, because the film committed itself to presenting a picture of the kind of affluent, loving, life-style that most Americans disenchanted with the punitive doctrines of a medieval faith would’ve been aspiring to at the time; it is only after this image is solidified that medieval Evils raise their ugly head.

 

Chris MacNeil (Ellen Burstyn) is a successful actress, separated from her husband, and doting on her daughter Reagan (Linda Blair). Chris is affluent enough to have three servants and a mini-mansion in Georgetown, Virginia, she is non-religious, runs a tight household, assuring her child has proper supervision and is active in her child’s education and activities. Though some of her crowd seem a bit morally loose, but she is not (it’s a plot point that she keeps no drugs in the house, not even grass), and others in her crowd are quite respectable (despite her liberal politics, she’s invited to a White House dinner even though this was the Nixon years).

 

The beautiful mansion is plagued by strange noises that Chris thinks are rats, and Reagan starts displaying increasingly odd behaviors like having an invisible friend she calls Captain Howdy, inventing wild fabulations, and having short bursts of profanity-laden rage. Chris, with all the resources that affluence provides, seeks medical intervention earlier than many parents would.

 

As this unfolds, we are separately introduced to Fr. Damien Karras (Jason Miller), a youngish priest with a PhD in Psychology who is tasked with helping other priests with their emotional problems and crisis of faith. What he is disguising from his superiors is that he is undergoing his own crisis of faith, mostly tied to the fact that the obligations to his Ecclesiastical career in Georgetown has taken him far away from his mother in New York City, who is obviously on a downward physical and mental spiral. 

 

In these early passages of the film (almost the whole of the first half) there is something wonderfully domestic in the presentation of both family and parish life, and that careful grounding will mean everything later. Wrote Roger Ebert, “The movie is more horrifying because it does not seem to want to be. The horror creeps into the lives of characters preoccupied with their lives.”

 

There's a tenuous connection between Chris and Damien in the form of Fr. Joseph Dyer (William O'Malley, who was, in fact, a Priest in real life and also served as one of the film’s consultants) who is a friend of both. There’s another significant character introduced, the very appealing Police Lieutenant William F. Kinderman (Lee J. Cobb); Blatty clearly liked Kinderman given he receives such a loving development though always remains at the fringes of the narrative. Kinderman’s more like the characters in Blatty’s Comedic-work than the other players in this Drama, and built upon a classic mold, echoing characters like Inspector Porfiry Petrovich from Fyodor Dostoevsky’s novel “Crime and Punishment” (1866), Alfred Fichet from the film “Les Diaboliques” (1955), and the title character of the TV series “Columbo” (first aired in 1971). Kinderman’s role is related to deliberately-left-unresolved plot threads which I will address later, and he also brings some desperately needed levity to the proceeding, because after the forty-minute mark neither Chis nor Damien see anything is this world to laugh about.

 

The 40-minute-landmark is the film’s first “big scene” (that was how Vincent Canby, who hated the film, described it) which takes place during a party wherein Chris’ friends, both the most morally loose and most respectable, gather to have drinks, gossip, and sing show-tunes around a piano while Fr. Dwyer enthusiastically plays. Everyone is happy, the minor almost-fights are of no concern, but suddenly Regan, who is supposed to be upstairs in bed, appears her before the guests in her nightdress. Regan fixes her eyes on an astronaut, Billy Cutshaw (Dick Callinan), and says, “You're going to die up there." As she speaks the words, she urinates on the floor.

 

By this point, Regan’s already been taken to doctors, but now the situation is serious enough to require specialists. As the probing of Regan gets more intense, it also becomes more painful to the girl. Chris had dismissed priests as “Witch Doctors” at some point, but after the painful tests that provide no answers, Chris loses her faith in science and need a new place to turn to. Then, when she realizes that Regan probably killed a family friend, alcoholic film director Burke Dennings (Jack MacGowran) who was filling in for Regan’s Nanny, Sharon Spencer (Kitty Winn), Chris turns to the Church that she never a part of.

 

Initially, Damien faces Chris’ resentment because now that she’s finally ready to accept a Supernatural explanation, she finds herself faced with a yet another man of science; Damien insists he has again to test Regan’s Possession in an exhausting manner. Once this testing period is engaged, the Demon Pazuzu (whom Blatty derived from Assyrian and Babylonian mythology) toys with Damien, providing evidence of the Supernatural (like Telekinesis) but then distracting Damien with hints that the child is merely delusional (after taunting Damien with his mother’s death, the Demon is unable to provide his mother’s maiden name). Finally, Damien is provided with an unconditional proof, on Regan’s belly hives emerge spelling out the words, “Help Me.” As there is no possible scientific or secular explanation for such a thing, and an Exorcism is authorized.

 

(Sidebar: One of the admirable aspects of this film (and the novel more than the film) is its commitment to the idea the “extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.” Interestingly, but also inevitably, the evidence of Demonic Possession in the fiction is stronger than that in the Real-World case that inspired it. The messages from the trapped child on her own body were part of the Robbie Mannheim case, but there they weren’t spontaneously-emerging hives, but scratches which, of course, could’ve been easily self-inflicted. As later researchers established, the entire Mannheim case was poorly documented at the time and most of the reporting was based on hearsay instead of primary witness statements and medical records.)

 

Damien is provided the assistance of Fr. Merrin. The scene where Merrin arrives at the McNeil home, stepping out of a cab, framed by the open gates of the driveway, silhouetted by the glow of a foggy streetlamp, and staring upwards at a strong light source, a unnatural-seeming beam emanating from Regan’s bedroom, is the film’s most famous image, far more so than any of the notorious shock effects. It is just one example of Director William Friedkin’s unerring compositional eye, and was inspired by a classic painting by Rene Magritte, “Empire of Light” (1954).

 

Blatty actually had to fight to get director Friedkin, whom he wanted because of Friedkin’s work on “The French Connection” (1971), while the studio had already hired Mark Rydell. Rydell would’ve been an interesting, but uncertain, choice; his films displayed a fine eye for composition and color, and a perceptive view of character, but none were Crime or Horror films, so he had never displayed the visceral intensity that Blatty wanted because, well, his prior films weren’t supposed to be that way. Blatty got his way on this, as he did on most things, but not everything.

 

Like Hitchcock during “The Birds” (1963), Fredkin was a terror to his cast, going to extraordinary (and questionable) lengths to elicit more sincere reactions during the most intense scenes. Both Blair and Burstyn were treated roughly enough to elicit honest screams of pain and the risk of serious injury, and Blair was only fourteen-years-old at the time. Fredkin personally slapped Fr. O'Malley hard across the face for the sake of a reaction shot.

 

It was a lavish production. In scenes where Regan’s room is made Supernaturally cold by Demonic forces, the actors breathe appears as mist with every exhale. Before the emergence of SGI this was often referred to as “the impossible effect.” The Production’s solution was to (at great expense) refrigerate the set, use lights that didn’t generate much warmth, and have the cast endure real cold for extended periods.

 

Legendary Make-up artist Dick Smith is much praised for his work on Linda Blair, transforming Regan’s sweet face into a landscape erupting with scars of pain and rage; what many didn’t realize was that Von Sydow as Merrin wore more make-up than Blair, because he had been cast as a man thirty years older than himself and Friedken wanted a lot of close-ups during the claustrophobic, climatic, battle between Good-and-Evil. That this passed unnoticed by most is the real tribute to Smith’s genius.

 

I should address the cast here. There was consideration of some many very big names (Jane Fonda for Chris, Paul Newman for Damien, etc.) but wisely the casting played against audience familiarity in order to ground the sense of realism in the film’s first half. Burstyn had only recently come into prominence because of “The Last Picture Show” (1971). Miller was better known as the author of the play, “That Championship Season” (1972) than as an actor. Blair was a complete unknown. Von Sydow had a larger reputation internationally than in Hollywood, and his work on the dark, spiritual and psychological dramas of director Ingmar Bergman undeniably led to his role here (many consider the prologue a homage to Von Sydow and Berman’s “The Seventh Seal” (1957)). They were all flawless, and all the leads except Von Sydow were nominated for Academy Awards, that’s three out of the film’s total of ten nominations. It had two wins, Best Adapted Screenplay and Best Sound Mixing. Among the nominations that it didn’t win were Best Picture, the first time a Horror film to be so nominated, and Burstyn for Best Actress, probably the first time the lead in a Supernatural Horror film to be so nominated.

 

After Merrin's arrival at the house, the film switches into high gear. There had been shocking scenes earlier, notably the Demon’s spouting sickening and highly sexualized profanity (it is Mercedes McCambridge’s voice coming out of Blair’s mouth) and projectile vomit, Regan using a Crucifix as a dildo and physically assaulting her own mother, but nothing prepared the audience for what came next. The entire universe seems to have collapsed into that one house, and for the most part, the one bedroom, and all the evolving plotlines that existed outside that one room were unceremoniously dropped. The religious ritual is shown to be a physical and emotional marathon for the two priests. The story-time is clearly many hours, in the film-time was far more than a half-hour, and it is unrelenting.

 

The film ends with Good’s ambiguous triumph over Evil, innocent Regan is saved, but at the cost of both priests’ lives.

 

Though there were definitely bloodier Horror films that came before this one, there were things done here that had never been done on screen before. Moreover, the gorier films that preceded it were never considered prestige projects and most cheerfully wallowed in their own trashiness, like every film by marginal director Herschell Gordon Lewis. Gore-plus-prestige was maybe the thing most new about “The Exorcist.”

 

And the studio was afraid of it. Just months before its release there was talk of shelving the already completed, $10 million-dollar project. But when it opened, it proved a phenomenon: throughout the winter of 1973-74 people stood outside in bad weather for hours for a ticket, the lines wrapping around full city blocks for months on end. There were reports of people fleeing the theaters in terror, or becoming so physically and/or emotionally ill that ambulances need to be called. As effective as this film remains today, it’s hard to believe such a reaction could still be evoked and some specific effects, like Regan’s head rotating 180*, have become laughable in retrospect.

 

As is the case with any Supernatural Thriller that really captures the public imagination, a folk-lore emerges around it. Like “Rosemary’s Baby” (1968), “The Omen” (1976), and “Poltergeist” (1982) there were popular rumors of Supernatural Curses stalking cast and crew. “The Exorcist” also attracted a special type of lunacy, the intersection of Pseudo-Science and Paranoid Politics of a particular media-hungry quack named Wilson Bryan Key.

 

Key earned a PhD in communications as was a friend and colleague of the more famous Marshall McLuhan. His fringe theories became popular with the publication of his first book, “Subliminal Seduction: Are You Being Sexually Aroused by This Picture?” (1974) wherein he took media’s, especially advertising media’s, very real capacity to manipulate our emotions and self-image to guide of choices and blew it up into a wild tale of mind-control via hidden images (example: the naked lady hidden in the ice cube). The book became the basis of College courses even though Key showed no peer-review studies, or any type of rigorous research at all, to support his claims. The lynch-pin of Key’s argument was an experiment done with subliminal flashes (too fast to be consciously perceived) embedded in a movie in an experiment conducted by James Vicary in 1957; but that experiment proved impossible to repeat, and in 1962 Vicary admitted the whole experiment was a hoax – and that was more than a decade before Key’s book was published.

 

Key published three more books, mostly restating the claims made in the first. His second book, “Media Sexploitation” (1976), devoted an entire chapter to “The Exorcist,” it focused on quick flashes of the face of the Demon Pazuzu (whom he misidentified as actor Miller in Death make-up, but it was actually actress Eileen Dietz). The flashes were there, but there’s a problem with Key’s assertion, which Blatty pointed out, "There are no subliminal images. If you can see it, it's not subliminal."

 

Key’s association with the scientific and political fringe was further cemented when he became a plaintiff witness in a 1989 law suit claiming the Rock band Judas Priest included “secret messages” in their songs that were driving teenagers to suicide.

 

(Key’s work later became the basis of at least two episodes of “The X-Files” (TV show first aired in 1993) titled “Blood” and “Wetwired”)

 

Despite some very hostile reviews (I’ve already referenced Canby) most of the critical response was as enthusiastic as the audiences. As noted above, Roger Ebert praised the film, but he also expressed some trepidation because “The Exorcist” raised philosophical issues that it was not fully ready to tackle. He compared it (more effectively than you’d suspect) with Ingmar Bergman’s bleak and understated Chamber Drama “Cries and Whispers” that was released the same year:

 

“The difference, maybe, is between great art and great craftsmanship. Bergman’s exploration of the lines of love and conflict within the family of a woman dying of cancer was a film that asked important questions about faith and death, and was not afraid to admit there might not be any answers. Friedkin’s film…has the answers; the problem is that we doubt he believes them.”

 

In this film’s execution, there’s no sense of the punitive in the treatment of its morality -- Chris, the mother fighting for her child, is by far the film’s most admirable character -- but structurally, its moralism is pedantic: admirable Chris is also a single mom, separated in expectation of divorce, an atheist and even worse an actress (a profession traditionally associated with whore-dom). That Regan is being punished for Chris’ lack of submission to Jesus and the patriarchy is not an unreasonable interpretation of the plot outline though at odds with the film’s presentation.

 

This brings us back to the character of Lt. Kinderman. He’s a Detective investigating the death of Burke, and which he suspects was no accident, though he can’t prove it. This leads him to suspect that there is a Satanic Cult operating in Georgetown. Kinderman also suspected that the cult may be led by disenchanted or unstable Churchmen, and this was a logical supposition, made more convincing by the film’s early focus on the emotional burdens that priests carry, and could even explain the Demon’s inexplicable choice of this unremarkable child as a victim -- as all this unfolded in one neighborhood, poor Regan may have been nothing more than a victim by opportunity. In both the novel and the film those mysteries remain unsolved. (I thought Fr. Dwyer was an excellent suspect for the Satanist that brought Evil into the McNeil house, but subsequent developments in the franchise contradict that.)

 

This goes right to the heart of the most substantive complaint about the film, and the fundamental problems with the assumptions on which the ritual of Exorcism is based. Victims of Demonic possession are often quite young -- sixteen-year-old Clara Germana Cele in 1908; fourteen-year-old Robbie Mannheim in 1949; and the tragic case of Anneliese Michel who started displaying symptoms of a neurological disorder when she was only sixteen, came under the care of a Exorcist was dead in 1976 at age twenty-three and subsequently died of malnutrition and dehydration. Michel’s case became the basis of the film “The Exorcism of Emily Rose” (2005) that perversely chose to make the priest who killed her a hero.

 

So why kids? Why not the President?

 

Now I have to address scenes that were cut from the movie, then restored in the later “Director’s Cut” released in 2000. It’s worth noting that the Director’s Cut isn’t really, Freidkin preferred the theatrical release, but Blatty, who acted as producer on the film, preferred the one that was twelve-minutes longer. (The longer version was not shelved because of Freidkin’s artistic preferences, but because a movie with a two-hour running time is an easier sell than a longer one).

 

In the extended version there is more time spent on how torturous the Medical testing that Regan had to endure before Chris reached out for the Church. I say they made the film stronger.

 

Just after Chris learns of Burke’s death, she witnesses Regan execute an impossible-looking stunt, a “spider-walk” down the staircase, and for Chris the undeniable proof of the Supernatural. It was a well-staged and shocking scene (the walk was executed by gymnast Ann Miles) and was well-known enough that it was much-imitated even though it was cut from the original release. Friedkin insists that such explicitness came too early, he didn’t want things to get really disorientating and disgusting until Damien met Regan for the first time. I tend to agree with him.

 

And then there was the really important one, the one that addresses my complaint above. During the Exorcism proper, the exhausted priests do take one short break. Damien asks Merrin directly, what is the Evil’s end-game in abusing a little girl? Merrin’s answer in inadequate (well, what can he really know? He’s at War with Satan, they don’t do lunch) but his guess is more substantive than anything else the film offers. Merrin says that inflicting pain in this manner sows the seeds of despair, the foundation of the Sin of the Holy Spirit, the only unforgivable sin in Catholic Doctrine, and so the real target isn’t tortured girl but those around her. During the conversation, Merrin was clearly referring to Chris, but given what unfolds next, Merrin was probably, unknowingly, referring to himself and Damien. That scene definitely should’ve been left in.

 

The ending of both versions is ambiguous, with Regan, apparently free of Possession, leaving the mini-mansion with Chris forever, "She doesn't remember any of it." Allegedly Blatty disliked the shorter version of the release because it seemed to lean in the direction that the Devil may have won, while the longer version is more optimistic. Personally, I find the differences between the two inconsequential.

 

As “The Exorcist” was one of the biggest hits in Hollywood history, it is often cited as the single greatest financial champion in the Horror genre until the remake of “It” (2017), a franchise was inevitable. What came after was both problematic and unnecessarily complicated, but not all bad.

 

The first sequel, “The Exorcist II: The Heretic” (1977) was, despite being directed by the great John Boorman, is legendary for its awfulness. Carrying over only two characters from the original (Linda Blair as Regan and Kitty Winn as her nanny) it involved neither Blatty nor Friedkin. It had poorly conceived characters and a stupid, largely incoherent plot, it showed shocking ignorance of Catholic doctrine and substituted a lot of pseudo-science that wasn’t even internally consistent. Apparently the first draft of the screenplay, by William Goodhart, was infused with the metaphysical ideas of Fr. Pierre Teilhard de Chardin (the Real-World inspiration for Fr. Merrin), but it was so awkward that it had to be rewritten from scratch by Rospo Pallenberg at the last minute and as shooting began the script didn’t even have an ending.

 

I will grant this train-wreck two things: excellent FX and making the nanny the Satanist who originally brought the Occult into the MacNiel household (she is even a better suspect than Fr. Dwyer and I never thought of her). Still, it’s deservedly on many lists of the “Worst Movie Ever Made.”

 

Blatty, meanwhile, did not initially want to return to the material, but was still fascinated by the ideas. He chose to tell a radically different tale, revising one of his earlier Comic novels, “Twinkle, Twinkle, Killer Kane!” (1966) into “The Ninth Configuration” (1978) which he made a film of (1980, different releases of the film present the two titles interchangeably). Blatty has expressed disappointment with his revised novel but was more pleased with the screenplay. Its connection to “The Exorcist” is mostly intellectual, though it does retain that character of Astronaut Billy Cutshaw (now played by Scott Wilson, so apparently, he didn’t “die up there”). Actor Miller, again, had substantive part, though his character here his is completely unrelated to his one in “The Exorcist.” The film which was a critical, if not commercial, success. It was set in a Military Psychiatric Hospital, and its characters are battling personal, not Supernatural, Demons.

 

Blatty finally penned a direct sequel to “The Exorcist” with the novel “Legion,” which understandably ignored the existence of the second film. The central character this time is Det. Kinderman, who is investigating a Serial Killer who is mimicking the Gemini Killer, whom Kinderman knows is already dead. Blatty takes on the metaphysical stumbling points of both his first novel by revealing that the Ghost of Gemini is now a Demon inhabiting the body of Fr. Damien Karas – Yes, Damien is supposed to be dead, but in some paperwork mix-up led the now comatose quadriplegic priest to be miscategorized as a John Doe and dumped and forgotten in a Psyche Ward. I’d love to say such things are impossible, but you never know.

 

This novel’s Gemini Killer has the power to leave Damien’s body to Possess dementia patients who still have use of their arms and legs, and they build up a significant body-count during these sojourns. Unlike Pazuzu, he’s not a powerful mythological Creature with thousands of years of History, but base human scum granted unreasonable power to serve only personal motives: He kills innocent strangers to shame the faith of his abusive, religious-fanatic, father. When Gemini learns his father is already dead by natural causes, this exercise in perversity and sadism is rendered futile even by the Demon’s dubious standards.

 

In the novel, Blatty rewrites the Cosmic Hierarchy to address unanswered Metaphysical questions left dangling in the earlier work. I can best explain what I think was going on is to compare Pazuzu to the terrorist group Daesh (ISIS is you wish) operating in Iraq and Syria, while smaller Demons, like the Gemini Killer, are akin to self-radicalized lone-wolf terrorists, operating in Western countries. In the War between Heaven and Hell, Pazuzu/Daesh has big ambitions, focused on territorial gains beyond humanity’s perceptual horizon and of redefining the business of doing business within those seized territories. Our world is outside the territories, and here Pazuzu/Daesh expends only limited resources but still loves to inflict despair through acts of disruptive terrorism, upending the comfortable moral norms and therefore subvert faith. The Gemini Killer now becomes akin to Syed Rizwan Farook and Tashfeen Malik, who had no operational connection to Daesh but were immersed in terror group’s propaganda and even swore their allegiance to it. Their great act of Jihad was shooting up an office Christmas party, so their terrorist act that was as petty as it was horrific.

 

Important is that the novel denies the all-powerfulness of God, and monotheism itself. Why is God’s creation Satan such a treat? Because he isn’t God’s creation, God and Satan were co-created, Evil is, but isn’t part of God’s plan.

 

This second Novel didn’t feature an Exorcism, but when it was made into the film “The Exorcist III” (1990), the studio insisted there be one. It’s a fine film, intelligent, full of witty dialogue and a couple classic scare-scenes, but the ending is weak. Also, most of Blatty’s increasingly exotic Metaphysics is left out, like the novel’s deleted epilogue that addresses how the Devil came to be born, which contains ideas that are pretty unique. In this film, Kinderman is played by George C. Scott, Miller returns as Damien, but when the Gemini Killer is in charge, the face and voice is that of Brad Dourif.

 

The saga of the franchise doesn’t end there. Legendary Director John Frankenheimer was involved in a prequel to “The Exorcist” penned by William H. Wisher Jr. and Caleb Carr. Though neither Freidkin nor Blatty were involved, but Blatty, at least, expressed his support of the project, or at least the first version of it he saw, which managed to be a fine film despite Frankenhiemer having to pull out during pre-production because of poor health (he died a month later). He was replaced with Paul Schrader who had the unusual resume in have already having written and/or directed high quality films within both the Horror and Religious genres. Schrader chose to be faithful to the script and style the Frankenhiemer had already laid out.

 

The bulk of the story unfolds in 1947 in Kenya, still under British Colonial rule. The Demon is Pazuzu again, and the stakes are higher, Pazuzu has possessed an outcast boy, and through him manipulates others. Fr. Merrin (now played by Stellan Skarsgård), is trying to save the boy and also watching both the English troops and Indigenous tribesmen descend into homicidal madness; Merrin realizes that it has fallen on him to stop a War before it begins.

 

Except for the original novel and film, "Dominion..." is the entry in this series most immersed in Catholic doctrine. Merrin must endure, and overcome, and upside-down version of the Temptation of Christ. Pazuzu teaches despair, and as Merrin is vulnerable because he’s so embittered by what he saw the Nazis do during WWII. Pazuzu knows that Merrin’s eroding faith in humanity is the chink in the armor of his faith in God.

 

Despite Blatty’s endorsement, he called it "a handsome, classy, elegant piece of work,” the studio hated it and went the almost unheard-of step of re-shooting almost the either film under the hands of a different Director, Renny Harlin, who already had a reputation for trash and bombs. His version, “Exorcist: The Beginning” (2004) was shot as a far more conventional Horror film. There were production problems that plagued both the cinematography and score. The story’s emotional through-line became hopelessly muddled, the plot itself full of holes, the resolution self-contradictory. Blatty hated even more than “The Exorcist II…” calling the experience of watching it his, "most humiliating professional experience."

 

The embarrassment was so great that the studio allowed Schrader to release his version on DVD later the same year. Though its reviews were better, they weren’t that great either, but I personally recommend it.

 

Then there was a TV series (first aired 2016), but I admit I haven’t seen it.

 

Trailer:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YDGw1MTEe9k