The Exorcist, of course, is one of the all time great American films. It excels for many reasons. As a horror film, obviously, it’s one of the scariest ever made. At the time of it’s release, 1973, American horror movies abided by an unspoken code; there were lines they didn’t cross. The Exorcist disregarded that code, and many audiences thought it went too far. The Exorcist works as human drama, too. At heart, it’s a story about a woman desperate to save her daughter from something she doesn’t understand and can’t control. Many Christians despise the movie because of the disturbing, sacrilegious images that are inherent to the story. That strikes me as a bit odd, because The Exorcist is ultimately a movie that supports Christianity. In The Exorcist, satanic evil invades an inherently agnostic family. That evil is driven out by unabashed, straightforward Christianity, and at the end, the family seems to accept that faith has triumphed where science and “progressive” thinking has failed. The gory, perverse elements of the film aren’t gratuitous or empty. The movie is simply honest about how awful evil really is. Theologically, The Exorcist is a sound, compelling, and devout story.
In 1977, John Boorman directed The Exorcist II: The Heretic. The sequel was as bad as the original was good. The Heretic is not entirely devoid of creative effort, and it’s easy to believe that Boorman wanted to craft a movie that was as innovative and challenging as the original film. In any case, he failed. The sequel is a mess.
William Peter Blatty, the author behind the novel that The Exorcist was based on, wrote his own sequel to the story, a novel called Legion. Blatty sold the movie rights to Legion and directed the feature himself. The resulting film is one of the great tragedies of the last 20 years of American cinema. Because of tampering by studio execs and Blatty’s willingness to tinker with his own story, the resulting film, titled The Exorcist III, falls short. The Exorcist III is imperfect; it might be fair to say that it isn’t even very good. Still, watching the movie is an interesting, absorbing experience. I can’t think of another film where the forces that shaped it are more obviously at war on the screen. The Exorcist III wants to be a movie about good and evil, mankind and God and the devil, and the power of faith. At times, it succeeds. In fact, for the most part, the movie is smart and interesting and completely credible. It is, however, burdened by a horrible, hokey ending (demanded by the studio) and a character who was re-imagined so that an actor from the original film (Jason Miller) could reprise his role in the new one (another studio demand). It’s frustrating to watch The Exorcist III and see the kind of film that Blatty was trying to make as it’s overcome by the movie that he was compelled to make.
The Exorcist III should be rightfully thought of as the only sequel to The Exorcist. In it’s chronology, the second Exorcist movie never existed. This tale is the story of the friendship between a policeman, Bill Kinderman, and a priest, Joe Dyer. Both Kinderman and Dyer were close friends of Father Damien Karras, the priest who died while performing the exorcism in the first film. In this film, two grizzly murders take place 15 years later, and as Kinderman investigates the murders, he examines his own ideas about God and mortality. The most compelling and interesting parts of The Exorcist III are simple conversations between Kinderman (played by George C. Scott) and Father Dyer (Ed Flanders). Father Dyer and Bill Kinderman talk about theology and God like two old friends playing chess… each familiar with the moves the other will make, each of them philosophically at odds with the other, and yet their friendship and mutual respect is apparent and inviting. Watching these scenes makes it obvious what kind of film Blatty wanted to make. I’m sure that The Exorcist III (or, Legion, as Blatty wanted to call it) would have been a quieter, smarter, more interesting film if Blatty had gotten his way. Alas, it wasn’t meant to be.
Blatty does manage to come up with a few interesting, artful images in the film. A dream sequence wherein Kinderman visits a crowded, surreal Heaven is particularly interesting. I found it impossible to watch the sequence without making guesses about the real nature of Kinderman’s belief in God and Heaven. While he claims atheism, the dream sequence suggests that Kinderman really believes in an ambivalent, even incompetent God. Heaven as he imagines it is unrewarding, confusing, and dilapidated. This complements his world view. If he sees the world as a place where evil has run amok and God is absent, it follows that he’d see Heaven as an innocuous but neutral existence where there’s no God either, no real peace or understanding, and nothing to sooth the soul. Kinderman seems to be a man who, deep down, does believe in God… but his career has made him so jaded that he no longer believes in goodness.
Other images in the film don’t work as well. Flashes of iconic religious statues that have been vandalized or modified sacrilegiously simply seem gratuitous. One statue looks so much like The Joker from Batman comics that it totally drew me out of the movie. The movie begins to falter irredeemably with the introduction of the villain, a man who may or may not be the reincarnated spirit of a long-dead serial killer… who may or may not be residing in the long dead body of the late Father Karras. This is where the studio’s tampering really gets the better of the film. Studio executives wanted to ensure a built-in audience for the film by bringing back Jason Miller, who’d played Father Karras in the original movie. Therefore, Blatty recreated his villain so that Miller and Brad Dourif could each play the role at different times in the film. Dourif delivers a fine performance for his part; his version of the bad guy is absolutely creepy and downright scary. Miller, however, seems to be phoning it in. And I don’t blame him. This duel-performance is a bad idea, and begins to sink the movie.
Finally, it’s the studio’s demand that the movie conclude with an exorcism that is the movie’s ultimate undoing. Nicol Williamson plays a priest who has performed exorcisms before, and ultimately it’s his task to exorcise the demon from the Dourif/Miller character. Williamson’s character is a bad attempt to create a character with the resonance and power of Max Von Sydow’s character, Father Merrin, from the first film. It doesn’t work. Williamson’s Father Morning is a flat, meaningless character who never has the chance to make an impact on the audience. His scenes are brief and almost utterly devoid of dialogue, and the movie actually becomes silly when Father Morning begins his exorcism. The movie finishes with a rushed, contrived, and insultingly bad conclusion. The ending, in fact, is so bad that it’s difficult not to judge the entire film by the final scenes.
All in all, however, The Exorcist III is a bad movie made up of several good parts. George C. Scott, Ed Flanders, and Brad Dourif are all good in their roles. The conversations between the principle characters are interesting and enjoyable. I wanted more of that, more friendly sparing between the cop and the priest. I wanted more theology and less B-movie horror.
There are a couple of genuinely scary scenes in The Exorcist III. One jump scene in a hospital hallway really works well, and although Dourif’s possibly possessed villain never approaches Linda Blair’s level of creepiness from the first film, he does manage to give a few chills. Still, this is movie torn in two directions. Does it want to make the viewer think or make the viewer jump? Is it a movie about people and their relationships or is it simply a movie about creepy images and scary bad guys? There are two movies simultaneously on the screen, here… one good and one awful. Blatty and the studio executives are at war here, fighting for the soul of this movie. Unfortunately, as far as the movie itself is concerned, evil triumphed in the end.
