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I’m watching the film right now, and wondered if this has been discussed, and what theories there are about it. At the beginning, right after the title comes up, as we walk towards the steps, there is a man running through. I believe he runs through three times, and appears to be wearing a cassock. Has anyone else noticed this? I find it strange and creepy. I’d love to know why William Peter Blatty put him there.
Good catch. Yes, it's been discussed. I can only offer my theory, which is:
During the credits, we hear Jason Miller telling us that he dreams of a rose and a fall down a long flight of stairs. But we find out that Jason Miller is playing two roles – Karras and the Gemini Killer. Therefore, the POV of the opening narration is ambiguous: it could be Karras, it could be the Gemini (why would Karras remember a rose?).
My notion is that the opening narration is a sort of febrile dream shared between the trapped Karras and the possessing Gemini. Karras would recall the stair-fall, the Gemini would certainly remember the black kid who is holding the rose, as the Gemini's first Georgetown victim.
Just as the narration may be a fever-dream, so too perhaps is the opening credits photography. In his dream, Karras is still the cassocked priest of the night of the MacNeil exorcism. This priest is not running in just any neighborhood: rather, he is running directly in front of the MacNeil house, and the landing of the Hitchcock Steps.
So perhaps this is Karras' repeated nightmare about that night. But it might also be part of the Gemini's dream.
The vengeful demon “inserts” the Gemini – along with Karras – back into Karras' body on the night of the exorcism. Therefore, the Gemini has a distinct memory of being placed inside the body of a bloody-cassocked priest. We know that, once in control of Karras' body, the Gemini broke out of the cheap coffin, scaring its attendant, Brother Fain, to death. Perhaps in his first fit of exuberant freedom from “the Void”, the Gemini, in Karras' body, ran mad through the neighborhood of the MacNeil house. If so, doubtless the trapped Karras would also be aware of this “mini-marathon” as well.
Blatty's suggestion of a running priest is very disturbing. What is a priest doing running in front of the MacNeil house/the Steps? What other priest besides Karras had a consistent connection to the house and the Steps? Thus, Blatty is insinuating that the priest has some deep connection to Karras, and may in some dark way actually be Karras. Hence my theory of a dream shared both by Karras and the Gemini, who both share the same body and who both have a profound connection to the MacNeil neighborhood.
Intriguing interpretation, Granville, but I have a question regarding Brother Fain…
I've sadly yet to read Legion, so perhaps it is addressed, but why wouldn't Fain immediately inform his superiors that Karras/Venuman had escaped the “cheap” coffin? Of course, logical human behaviour would have robbed the film of its revelation and delicious ambiguities, but it always sat a tad silly with me that the tragic death and subsequent resurrection of a priest would be kept on the QT for fifteen years. Did he die of fright or killed and used to replace Karras' body in the coffin?
Granville, that was the most fascinating answer/theory I could have hoped for. Thank you! I hadn’t thought of any of those things, and it brings a whole new level of creepiness to the opening. Teddy, you are indeed right…he was an old priest who had a massive coronary when Karras crawled out of his coffin. Karras then put Fain’s body in the coffin in his place. Fain had been loudly complaining to anyone who would listen about how he felt mistreated and was going to leave one day, so when he disappeared after preparing Karras body, no one found it unusual.
Teddy Headspin,
In the novel, iirc, the Gemini kills Fain and puts him into Karras' coffin. Since everyone knew that Fane was the attendant, no one bothered to look inside the coffin, because it was simply a case of Fain disappearing, with no evidence that he had been murdered and put into Karras' coffin, i.e., they knew that Fain “went missing”, but they didn't know he had been murdered and put in the casket.
In the novel, Blatty explains that Fain had always been dissatisfied with life in the Order, and would frequently gripe about wanting to just walk out on the whole thing. He had family he could contact if need be. The Jesuits interpreted Fain's absence simply as his finally walking away from the Order. They had no suspicion that he had been murdered.
“…that the tragic death and subsequent resurrection of a priest would be kept on the QT for fifteen years…”
Sure, it's a stretch, but it's Blatty's stretch and I just accept it as part of the story. The Jebs thought they had buried Karras, while unknowingly burying Fain. Now all that had to happen was that Karras/Gemini/vengeful demon/Tommy Sunlight/Patient X remain incognito. “He was picked up wandering the C&O Canal.” That's all the data we are given about Karras-Vennamun's post-coffin break odyssey, other than that he was “catatonic”. An unknown face, an unknown person, catatonic, unkempt, is admitted into the hospital mental ward. Unless there were staff members on hand who would have recognized the physiognomy as Damien Karras' … then he could truly have remained incognito for all of those years. The Jesuits or parish priests would have no connection to the psych ward, except perhaps for occasional visits to fulfill the obligations of “visiting the sick” – but of course, this is not mentioned at all in Blatty's two Exorcist tales. Kinderman would not have been notified of Patient X because Kinderman is a homicide detective, not a lost-or-missing persons specialist. Fr. Dyer would not have any specific reason to sojourn to the psych ward where he could serendipitously meet Karras. So, there is a certain plausibility in Vennamun-Karras hiding out in the psych ward for a decade.
drexul said:
Granville, that was the most fascinating answer/theory I could have hoped for. Thank you!
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drex, you are very welcome 🙂
Thank you both. Come to think of it, there is supposed evidence that the final shot of The Exorcist III was rearranged to complete Karras' redemptive arc. But it was originally part of a scene – when the film was Legion, before studio interference – in which the grave is exhumed at Kinderman's request to determine whose corpse it was. Any truth to that, guys?
Sorry, I don't know the answer. The final shot is open to interpretation. I always thought that it represented the exchange of Fain's body with Karras'. After the (highly improbable) fatal shooting of Karras by Kinderman, we are seeing Karras' body finally laid to rest, as should have been done some twelve years earlier. I don't know its original order in the original, pre-studio tampering Legion film.
granville1 said:
Sorry, I don't know the answer. The final shot is open to interpretation. I always thought that it represented the exchange of Fain's body with Karras'. After the (highly improbable) fatal shooting of Karras by Kinderman, we are seeing Karras' body finally laid to rest, as should have been done some twelve years earlier. I don't know its original order in the original, pre-studio tampering Legion film.
Do you feel that Legion adapted faithfully – if not verbatim – would have made for a stronger film? I've grown exceedingly fond of III, even the much-maligned exorcism. Kinderman's vitriolic response to the demon as he's forced to the wall is one my favourite scenes.
Actually I'm with you on the guilty pleasures of enjoying the re-visioned film, Fr. Morning, exorcism and all.
A screenplay based solely on the Legion novel could have worked … except for that terribly weak, anti-climactic ending. The whole novel was speeding toward an explosive climax, but then sputtered out, with
SPOILERS
… Vennamun/the Gemini simply losing steam and dropping dead once he hears that his despised father – the entire reason for his killing career to begin with – has died. Sorry to say, the end cries out for high drama, and the film delivers it. Sure, venemous snakes, lightning-induced earthquakes, hell-flames, Karras crucified – although clearly meant to be visionary – are all over-the-top. However, the Legion film devlivers:
1. Our beloved Damien Karras, who returns not only as a reanimated corpse, but as himself – captured and tormented by the vengeful demon of the original story, but also by the minions of Hell … and worst of all, by witnessing his body as it kills and rips and mutilates his old friends and other innocents.
2. Our old friends, Fr. Dyer and police detective William Kinderman.
3. Our beloved Georgetown locations.
4. Kinderman as the “new Karras”, a role he shares with Morning. Together, they become this story's “exorcists”. Only this time, it is the former exorcist Damien Karras who is tormented by demons and who must be liberated from their grasp by a joint effort by Morning and Kinderman.
5. An exorcism. Yay. Over-the-top, as mentioned, but still a vast improvement over the novel's “climax”.
6. An exorcist. Yay. Fr. Paul Morning, in a mostly poetically silent role, re-caps Merrin, and Blatty's photography of Morning in his room – which overlooks the Dahlgren Chapel, fountain (where Karras and Kinderman had their “going to the movies/sick priest” talk, and Damien Karras' former campus residence (“You look like Sal Mineo”) – gives several respectful nods to Friedkin's photography of Merrin in Iraq. as well as to familiar campus locales.
7. A return of the original demon at the climax. In the novel the demon is only in the background, supernaturally supporting the Vennamun's crimes and continuation in Karras' body. But in the film, the demon itself emerges as a character, to confront both Morning and Kinderman, and to save “my son, the Gemini” for further killing.
8. A beautifully sketched rehash of “that MacNeil kid's” case between Kinderman and the university president, complete with a reference to the Friedkin film in the form of a stopped clock pendulum.
9. Finally – unheard of in any Blatty material thus far – a direct intervention by God himself. God's absence was a major theme in the original novel and film.
This theme continues in the Legion film … until the climax, when both Morning and Kinderman have failed to liberate Karras. At the last moment, God manifests as a beam of holy light which revives Morning, allowing him to “get through” to the trapped Karras just long enough for Karras to resist the demon. In that moment, the demon loses his grip on Kinderman, who is able to answer Karras' cry: “Shoot now, Bill – kill me now” … Kinderman complies; and then Karras assures the detective – and the viewer – that “We've one … now set me free …” A final gunshot at last sends Damien Karras to the ultimate, Heavenly reward out of which he had been cheated that night twelve years earlier at the bottom of the Hitchcock Steps.
For these and several other reasons, I do prefer the film to the novel version, especially the return of Damien Karras and the return to the demonic, exorcistic materials, and the Blattian themes of the original novel and film.
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