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In the Blatty novel and in the Blatty-Friedkin film, Merrin's 12-year prior exorcism “lasted for months” and “damn near killed him”.
The first sequel, Exorcist II: the Heretic, preposterously shows Merrin hauling a possessed boy up a cliff, which is followed by a very tame, perfunctory exorcism with no paranormalia evident. If Merrin's heart was already weak, surely the climb-cum-exorcism would have been dangerous for him. But Boorman gives us no indication that Merrin's heart is weak during this first exorcism, and Merrin himself seems perfectly fit at this moment. He only “gains” his bad heart later on, when the faux-Blair double metaphorically crushes the priest's diseased organ (his heart, be it re-affirmed for the dirty-minded).
In Exorcist: the Beginning, the same principle applies. Merrin is forced to crawl through tunnels and is tossed around telekinetically, but is amazingly resilient. Even the loss of his love interest seems a momentary, non-life-changing grief.
In Dominion, Prequel to the Exorcist, we get more of the same. Merrin confronts the demon in the underground “chapel”, but again he is amazingly resilient and shows no sign of the cardiac condition that will eventually kill him. Here, too, Merrin gets bounced around a bit, and he is given the grim and certain knowledge that even had he acted against the Nazis, the outcome would have been the same. He merely endures one or two physical shocks and a psychic trauma. The exorcism itself only lasts minutes, and aside from a faceful of vomited-forth stinging quasi-insects, Merrin remains quite intact, physically and mentally. Moreover, he emerges much stronger spiritually.
None of these films does justice to the original exorcism as described by Blatty. Had the filmmakers and screenwriters simply run out of terrifying ideas? Surely they could have obtained some very creepy case information from Blatty's novel, which describes the horrendous things that are purported to have happened during exorcisms. But they treat the exorcisms like something they want to present as briefly and as shallowly as possible.
Blatty's film Exorcist III: Legion is the only “franchise” film – other than, of course, the original film – that suggests the exhausting nature of exorcism. Its exorcist, Father Paul Morning, is subjected to extreme physical and mental torture. Although over-the-top, Legion's presentation of demonic assault is harrowing. One can easily imagine physical and mental damage resulting from a Legion-type exorcism, especially if it extended over months.
So .. with all the material available to the subsequent films, it is surprising and disappointing that they never match the fury of the original story's/film's exorcistic depictions.
In my book, out of the 5 “Exorcist” films. Only 3 are canon. The Exorcist, The Exorcist III Legion, and Dominion Prequel to the Exorcist.
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Exorcist II:The Heretic had very good acting but the storyline was unbelivably cheesy.
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Exorcist:The Beginning is nothing more than a mixture of The Mummy, Saw, and The Exorcist and it turned out just plain AWFUL. Unlike Dominion, I never had any attachments to any characters and the entire movie was just sick. Blood, guts, and dismembered body parts flying everywhere did NOT make the original film AT ALL so why here?!
I agree about Dominion – it's the most profound, serious, and “BLattyiesque” of the secondary films 🙂
I was always willing to overlook the business about 'the exorcist lasting for months and nearly killing him'. That's not going to translate to film anyway. So you either accept the lack of continuity or chalk it up to some gossipy priests exaggerating the tale over the years. The problem with the prequels was that (imo) Merrin wasn't the focus of The Exorcist, the relationships were. Exorcist II (which had no dramatic weight) had no business even including Merrin. The inclusion doomed the movie. Exorcist: The Beginning was noisy & unlikely overall and conveyed none of the power Blatty instilled in The Exorcist III by effortlessly constructing relationships and characters worth caring about. The exception to the prequel curse would be; Dominion, which I quite liked and respected and wish had been a better film and a better horror fim.
Thanks for your reply – good observations on the other films, with Dominion at the top of the list – which I agree with. Dominion is my favorite of the non-Friedkin films and it even has some Blattyesque thoughts, as when the nurse says to Merrin, “Sometimes I think the best view of God is from hell”, and it brings in Merrin's pride when Francis challenges him not to condemn in others a faith that once nurtured Merrin …
Have a heart (
 ) … the follow-up films had no cognitive meaning other than being cash-ins on the box-office success of the one and only film, The Exorcist. Had Morgan Creek stayed out of Blatty's way, his true second film, Legion, could have had some potential.Father Bowdern
I liked Beginning better cause it should Pazuzu more, as in statue and head. And how it got burried. Also showed the demon with more crude humor. Which was in the first film.
granville1 said:
“In the Blatty novel and in the Blatty-Friedkin film, Merrin's 12-year prior exorcism “lasted for months” and “damn near killed him”.
The first sequel, Exorcist II: the Heretic, preposterously shows Merrin hauling a possessed boy up a cliff, which is followed by a very tame, perfunctory exorcism with no paranormalia evident. If Merrin's heart was already weak, surely the climb-cum-exorcism would have been dangerous for him. But Boorman gives us no indication that Merrin's heart is weak during this first exorcism, and Merrin himself seems perfectly fit at this moment.”
What you must understand GRANVILLE1 is that the movie world will always be different from the novel world. Stop mixing these in your mathematical equation. You will always hit a wall.
First of all, John Boorman's vision was the complete opposite from the “Bill” team. The William duo were offered first to make the sequel which they both declined. If William Friedkin and William Peter Blatty did not like “EXORCIST 2: THE HERETIC” well that's their problem. I have a very personal point of view on this subject. Let's not forget that Boorman was offered first the job to direct the first “EXORCIST”. But he felt that it was too dark. Again he was offered to make the sequel and that's where he saw the opportunity to make something more on a brighter note.
“EXORCIST 2” was awarded as the second worst movie of all time. On what grounds? A good director leaves no questions unanswered in a specific movie. John Boorman left no questions unanswered. Unlike Friedkin, which planted more questions rather than answers. That being said “EXORCIST 2” is superior to the first “EXORCIST”. Just because William Peter Blatty was the first to start laughing in the theater followed by William Friedkin does not mean John Boorman did a bad job. “A spectator must adapt to the movie, and the movie should not adapt to the spectator.” It was very disrespectful from the two “Bill's” to ridicule Boorman like they did at the premiere of the movie. On this note, I find “EXORCIST 3” from William Peter Blatty very low quality and laughable.
Boorman's vision was not as extreme as the first movie. He did not want to push everything to the limit like the “Bill's”. He wanted to make a brighter and more positive movie. Does that make him a bad director? No. Where Boorman did make a mistake, however, is that the audience was not ready for this. They wanted to feel the same rush that they felt with the first one. Boorman denied this to them. And this was the real error of judgment, as Boorman himself now confirms.
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Just because William Peter Blatty was the first to start laughing in the theater followed by William Friedkin does not mean John Boorman did a bad job.
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It's not the laughter that meant Boorman did a bad job. It is the cause of the laughter that means Boorman did a bad job. His film is funny on nearly level except intentionality.
granville1 said:
” It is the cause of the laughter that means Boorman did a bad job.”
The movie was not funny at all. The topic is about demonic possession. There is nothing funny about that.
Do you know what was the cause that made Blatty laugh? Which he immediately left the theater about 20 minutes the movie began. It was in the “synchronizer” scene.
What is so funny about that? According to Blatty there is no such thing as a “synchronizer” under hipnosis. TRUE. So according to him Boorman is a liar and is mocking the audience. O.k. then. What about the spinning head in the first “EXORCIST”? Was that a true fact? NO. So William Peter Blatty is also a liar. How would Blatty feel if someone would get up and sabotaged all of his efforts with a sarcastic and malive laugh? In the “synchronizer” scene, John Boorman was simply trying to answer one of the many questions that was left in the first “EXORCIST“, “what the hell happened between Regan and Father Merrin?”.
If “Exorcist 2” went down hill so fast it was because of the un-professional behavior of William Peter Blatty in the theater. Blatty was not going to let someone else take control of his baby and he made sure of that. A position he still holds today as he does not aprove the new “EXORCIST” remake project. And Blatty knows there is no such thing as “levitation” or “paranormal” occurences. Which again adds to the lies of the first “EXORCIST”.
By the way this is what Father Walter Halloran says about the movie which is inspired by the exorcism he performed on 13 year old Roland Doe in 1949: “Father Halloran maintained until his death in 2005 that he never witnessed the boy display any of the supernatural behavior portrayed in the film; no foreign languages, changes in tone of voice, aversion to holy objects, unusual strength, vomiting or urinating, or unusual markings on the boy's body.“Â
John Boorman's movie was great. But it had 2 or 3 cheesy scenes I'll give you that GRANVILLE1.
“Do you know what was the cause that made Blatty laugh? Which he immediately left the theater about 20 minutes the movie began. It was in the “synchronizer” scene.”
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As good a time as any to laugh and leave. The machine was ridiculous, as was the simultaneous “Merrin Agonistes” scene where the ultra-fake Blair stand-in crushes Merrin's heart while the Synchronizer does its thing. Blatty had the good sense to leave before he split a gut. The gizmo looks like something out of a combined Marx Brothers-Ed Wynn-Three Stooges production. In 1977, there was no excuse for such a silly looking clunker of a machine. 1967's Quatermass and the Pit/Five Million Years to Earth handled the idea of a telepathic headset much more believably and conservatively than did the ham-thumbed Boorman.
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“What about the spinning head in the first “EXORCIST”? Was that a true fact? NO. So William Peter Blatty is also a liar.”
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No. The full 360 degree head spin is not in the novel or the original screenplay – Friedkin specifically designed a Blair dummy for this single effect. The half-head spin, however, is humanly possible – it's been demonstrated on You Tube several times. The half-head spin appears in the novel, but even then Blatty leaves doubt about its literalness, because Chris sees it only after Regan has smashed Chris's head against a wall. Friedkin, not Blatty is the “liar” in this scene.
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“Blatty knows there is no such thing as “levitation” or “paranormal” occurences. Which again adds to the lies of the first “EXORCIST”. “
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No. Blatty is a big believer in the parnormal and has reported such events in his own life, such as a telephone receiver that floated up over the phone by itself while he was sitting next to it. His memoir about his mother, I'll Tell Them I Remember You, records several paranormal incidents.
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“what Father Walter Halloran says “
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It's a question of whom you want to believe. At least one other priest, plus “Robbie's” minister, and several eyewitnesses vouched for paranormal events in the original case. Blatty was not “lying” when he made some of these events part of the MacNeil case. Rather, Blatty conflated events from the original case with the strongest kinds of similar events from exorcistic documentation. This conflation is artisitic license, not “lying”, because Blatty took the incidents, and his paranormal research, at face value.
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“If “Exorcist 2″ went down hill so fast it was because of the un-professional behavior of William Peter Blatty in the theater.”
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Hardly. Probably most of the people in that particular theater did not even know that Blatty was there. Even if they did, you are taliking about a single incident in a single theater, certainly nothing significant enough to hurt the film in other theaters. I saw it in a podunk theater in the Pacific Northwest, where nobody knew or cared about Blatty's viewing, and they still greeted it with mocking laughter. Audiences went to see the movie, unaware of, and uncaring about, Blatty's opinion. The filmed bombed under its own weight.
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“Boorman was simply trying to answer one of the many questions that was left in the first “EXORCIST“, “what the hell happened between Regan and Father Merrin?”. “
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Except the question itself does not need to be asked. There is no suggestion in the novel or the Friedkin film that anything happened between Regan and Merrin. In the film, the last we see of Merrin is him holding Regan's hand at the bedside, while he starts praying the Lord's Prayer. The next we see of him, he's simply dead on the floor. Why did he die? Easy: we know, even from the opening frames of the film, that Merrin has a bad heart, that his symptoms are increasing during the exorcism (he's shown in the bathroom taking more nitro). Merrin dropped dead of a heart attack. There is no “burning question” about “what transpired” between the demon and the priest. The situation does not invite any questions whatsoever. That is why Boorman so perilously and embarrassingly out-stretched himself so thinly by inventing a “mystery” around Merrin's death.
Nor was there any mystery or question as to why Regan was possessed to begin with. She was not part of a new generation of holy people Satan was attacking via possession. Rather – and quite simply – Regan was selected for possession by the demon for the explicit reason of punishing Merrin. The demon intended to kill Regan before Merrin could exorcise the demon. The plan was to kill Regan while the failed exorcist Merrin looked on helplessly. Merrin unwittingly defeated the demon’s plan by dying prematurely, which in the novel utterly infuriates the demon.
Thus, the story is complete in itself. It needs no embellishment or creation of false mysteries.
Worse, Boorman compounded his spurious “mystery” by presenting Church prelates as so blind and stupid that they are accusing Merrin of “Satanism”. Merrin, one of the Church's greatest minds; Merrin, who successfully exorcised a person in Africa twelve years earlier; Merrin, who died in one last heroic attempt at exorcism … is now a SATANIST??? This is an insult both to the Church and the saintly Merrin himself … but the severest casualty is common sense.
Thanks … according to Blair the first couple of drafts for Heretic were supposedly “very good”. But Voight dropped out, a bunch of re-writes ensued, and the final product is apparently much, much different from the original story. Too bad the original never got filmed. It's a little like Legion, where we have the “doctored” final product, while the semi-mythical, much better, original copy has been destroyed or is supposedly lurking under lock and key in some secret archive. The only difference of course is that “Legion I” had some filming done, but Heretic's early script(s) were never committed to celluloid, so I guess we'll never know how good Heretic could have been…
I'd love to get my hands on those first drafts of Heretic … originally it apparently even had a role for Kinderman, but Lee J. Cobb had passed away by then, so the story automatically lost one important character from the original story. Still, I'm very curious about what the film would have looked like minus all the sequential stupidities of Boorman's final product…
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