question about the exorcism scene in exorcist III legion maybe….

Thanks for the kind words, pazrags, but I hadn’t thought of this question before… but my .02 cents:

Performing the exorcism in a church would probably have required the bishop’s permission and I doubt there was time to procure that. The film gives the impression that Morning rushed over to the psycho ward cell as soon as he could, with or without a bishop’s permision.

Also, a church, as a public place, would have had to been locked up, which would have brought attention to the exorcism – something to be avoided at all costs.

Another factor is the time frame – if the exorcism turned out to last days or months, the impracticality of a church exorcism would become even more exacerbated.

Re: what might happen in the church: if we extrapolate from what happened in Patient X’s cell in the psycho ward, the least we could expect in the church exorcism is a series of visionary encounters with some violent telekinesis.

In the psycho ward exorcism there were no real snakes, no real lightning, no real cracks opening up in the floor, etc – those were subjective visions used by the demon to induce terror in Morning and Kinderman.

There was a heat blast that seared Morning’s robes and his copy of the Roman Ritual, and there was a telekinetic force that nailed both Morning and Kinderman to the ceiling/wall (plus the force that ripped open Morning’s flesh).

(There is also Miss Clelia’s ceiling walk, but that does not count as part of the exorcistic scene – note also, interestingly, that the Gemini, for all his powers, remains chained to his cot througout the exorcism. There is also the bleeding crucifix and the gust of “Pazuzu wind” in Morning’s room – but again, this was not involved in the exorcistic scene.)

Put simply, there is in the film very little external paranormal violence, at least relative to the luridness of the visionary material. I don’t see why a church exorcism should be expected to necessarily exhibit anything very different. The special concern in a church exorcism, as mentioned, would be over the victim’s privacy and keeping the procedure from public scrutiny.

Not to mention that by confining the exorcism to another “icy little room in Washington, D.C.”, Blatty continued the original Exorcist scenario of showing a huge evil confined to a small space.