CaptainHowdy.com The #1 Exorcist Fansite Since 1999
Forum Replies Created
-
Posts
-
Well it’s good to see you’re ok, Chum. Good luck on the edit. Just whatever you do, don’t make J2 look bad somehow in the process. 😮
Hi Hatter,
It’s good to be patient. As an editor myself, I understand how frustrating it can be to work on something for so long where all you await is the end of it. But in the end, it’s the most satisfying experience an editor or any filmmaker can have if the result is good. Often, I find myself going back to fix or add something because I hadn’t thought of it at the time of the major work or someone made a suggestion later. So don’t rush it and just take it at your pace. It is worth the wait. We don’t wish to see a Mad Hatter running loose. 😛
By the way, what kind of compression codec are you using? What program are you doing your rendering on? Take it easy.
As I do believe Dominion needed some polishing (which I believe Hatter is out to accomplish), the strongest points of Dominion are involving the storytelling. The mixture of British colonialism, post-WWII/Halocaust era to the ‘getting better’ as oppose to getting sicker elements of the possession really gives it a nice facelift on the ideologies of possession/exorcism in general. It’s also a very classically directed film. Like Paul Schrader said, a film set in the 40’s needs to not only feel like the 40’s, but it has to look like it was made in the 40’s like in the case of Hitchcock’s Spellbound.
Nice new ‘last post histories’ added next to the thread links, Cap’n. WordPress also seems to have a new look for the login page. Nice. 😀
Here’s the trailer again if it is not the same one on YouTube. Probably in better quality though.
Interestingly enough unlike Jeannot Szwarc’s film which is about the obsession of physical bugs, this film is more about the 21st century fear which is the obsession of bugs that don’t exist. Don’t know why the site is called worstpreviews. It’s a pretty good trailer to me if not misleading in a good way:
http://www.worstpreviews.com/trailer.php?id=419&item=0
Looks very Friedkinesque to me. 😀
I adore Hitchcock’s Psycho, Regan. There are of course some great screen captures around, but there should be some production photos of Hitch, Perkins, and Leigh around I’m sure. Is there going to be a sequel section to this site? Not too fond of them. I found Perkin’s III the best though and IV the worst. Anyway, I wish you luck on this.
If I remember correctly, there was a VHS copy of EII whose back summary was one of the most pretentious, over the top synopses I have ever read. I hope it is not that one you mean. 😮
That is a very interesting article, Mike. Pan’s Labyrinth was actually a very good film aside from some unusual themes seeming confused at what it was exactly trying to say, but other than that– probably Del Toro’s best film. I actually would have wanted to see a HP film done by him.
Well, Citizen Kane is a film more highly regarded among filmmakers since a lot of its amazing acheivements are not noticable without knowing what to look for: visual effects 50 years before its time (Orson Welles cut in next to Teddy Roosevelt and Hitler– had to do that with CGI in Forrest Gump), innovative aging makeup, perfectly measured shots in the photography that perfectly dissolve to other shots where a shape in the shot looks exactly the same as the previous, deliberately scratching film to make the documentaryesque footage look old, and that’s just a few of the examples. Yet it was made in 1941 and a lot of films back then move a lot slower than films years after that.
But fiction novel? It’ll be a bit too much to slate a novel from the 20th century. If you’re saying horror fiction, it might be Dante Alighieri’s Divine Comedy (Dante’s Inferno) or John Milton’s Paradise Lost, or Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, or Robert Louis Stevenson’s The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.
In the film race, it’s usually very unlikely to beat the usual five that end up on the top lists: Citizen Kane, Casablanca, Gone With The Wind, Lawrence of Arabia, and The Rules of the Game.
I too have always believed The Ninth Configuration was the true sequel. It is an excellent film, very well written and directed, laced with great performances, and has a lot of great things to say whereas Exorcist II has always been a gigantic mess. I think the original script of EII was still a gigantic bombastic misunderstanding of the Exorcist universe.
I actually wrote a review/history on Exorcist III a few years ago. Here’s my honest points: (It’s a lot to read though)
______________Now I’ve only felt that The Exorcist III was only ok/fine. Ok doesn’t mean it was bad though, and certainly not as bad EII. I like the fact that Blatty wrote and directed it himself, and did a good adaptation of his book, Legion. Here’s some trivia you might be aware of or not: Originally, Blatty wanted to release this just as “Legion,” but of course the studio didn’t like that idea and wanted the audience to know that this was an Exorcist film and make sure it was known that it relates to the original. So they wanted to release it as The Exorcist III. Blatty though had two BIG problems with that. One, there was no exorcism in this film or any from the book. So why call it Exorcist? Two, why would you want to acknowledge Exorcist II which was incredibly horrendous and give this a numeral III?
Unfortunately, Blatty had to abide to the Warner Bros’s wishes and he placed an exorcism in the film that in terms of its preparation and development with Father Morning it wears a little thin. Morning is only mentioned once and he then has two scenes to himself where he experiences weird phenomenon though there is no explanation. When first watching his scenes, you think he just knows that there is something wrong, but doesn’t have any idea Patient X has something to do with it. We seem to know as an audience that something is wrong, but it doesn’t signal to us as signs of possession like in the original. So somehow he gets the premonition that there’s something at this ‘different’ psychiatric hospital. The exorcism in this film is actually my favorite part of the film, and it gives the necessary nostalgia we have for the original. Though I think certain elements of the exorcism are also a bit bombastic: bible catches on fire, snakes everywhere, collapsing head? It was Jason Miller’s freakish demonic performance (with a Mercedes McCambridge-like voice similar to Regan in the original) that made me love it a lot. That brings me to another point: the great internal, natural Jason Miller who played Father Damien/Patient X was not even originally in the production. It wasn’t until after Blatty screened his first cut to studio execs that they asked for an exorcism and wanted a member of the original cast to be put in place to give it some actual nostalgia (sounds like at least one exec went to film school). Brad Dourif who is famous for Chucky and now Grima Wormtongue that plays the Gemini Killer in that film was also originally Father Damien entirely in the rest of that film. In fact, the scene where Damien takes his dive originally showed Dourif simulating the fall. In the trailer to Exorcist III, you will hear a voice screaming the original lines, “Take me!! Come into me!!! TAKE ME!!!” Then we cut to Blatty’s new and grimer look at the stair ‘descent.’ It’s Brad Dourif’s voice. So Blatty had to go back and reshoot all the Damien scenes including the picture of him in the beginning once he got Miller (don’t know why he didn’t get him before– scheduling problems?) and the result is an even better schizophrenic, nostalgic fight between poor, “metaphysically raped” wronged Father Damien and overzealous, “Igor-like” psychopath showman James Vehenman. Incidently (yes, incidently– hee hee), I prefer Miller’s more truthful sounding psychotics to Dourif’s “look at me I’m a psycho killer” scenario, though Dourif is quite brilliant himself. “Oooh, a few boos from the gallery.” I suppose this is one of the few times I have heard a studio making a right decision about a film (though some other decisions from the studio also caused some problems on the other hand), though some Exorcist III die-hard fans wanted a director’s cut without the exorcism.
Humorous enough because Blatty knew that he was partially responsible for the making of Exorcist II: The Heretic because he gave away his rights to allowing WB to make only one sequel without his involvement, Blatty does not show the house at all when Father Dyer takes a look down those famous ‘Hitchcock’ steps again. I think it was pointed out by someone here that The Exorcist III could have been a lot better if certain things were allowed a little more concentration instead of what they picked. I agree for reasons that it should have been obvious, and these are problems that filmmakers would usually notice. That is why some people still felt this sequel was cursed itself for Blatty’s decisions and the studio’s decisions, even though that may sound superficial. Blatty’s damaged movie. For example, I myself think they spend way too much time on The Gemini Killer’s psychotic confessions. Yes, it’s very fascinating the first time around, but by the third it gets a bit old. It would have been better to spend more time with the humanity of the characters especially more so with George C. Scott’s breakdowns over Dyer’s death. There are a number of things that also don’t make sense in conjuction with the original Exorcist. One, in Exorcist III Scott’s character of Lt. William Kinderman (played originally by the great American method actor Lee J. Cobb– yay!!! unfortunately died in ’77) was supposed to be best friends with Jason Miller’s Father Damien. When did this happen? Damien and Kinderman only meet in one scene in the original film. I suppose they could have developed an off-screen friendship during that film, but that seems like too much speculation. This theory though thins out when Kinderman is seen ‘watching’ Damien leave the MacNeil house in the original. If they were friends, why didn’t he say ‘hi?’ Because he was undercover? That’s highly unlikely. And when did they have the time to take that picture seen in the opening scene? It has been speculated by other Exorcist III fans that Kinderman was so lonely that he would ‘make up’ friendships that may have not really been as close as you would think as seen where he keeps asking people to see movies with him. Friedkin in the original always said that was his Columbo approach to get people to like him as he slowly finds out the truth, so I’m not sure if that was ever an idea that was conceived in the original. Kinderman and Dyer seem to have had a better chance of developing such a friendship in the Version You’ve Never Seen that shows Kinderman and Dyer meeting at the end. It was also Dyer who was only seen during Damien’s ‘death’ in the original played by a brilliant non-actor Father William O’Malley.
O’Malley himself played Dyer as a bit of a ham, but a very caring, warm, and friendly man. Ed Flanders who plays Dyer in III (respect to Flanders who also died in ’95) plays him more with a cynical, jaded, sarcastic, and closed-off exterior. I understand that Flanders is entitled to his own interpretation especially so since he was an accomplished actor vs. O’Malley was only an accomplished priest. Yet we seem to miss the old Dyer, and when he meets his death, we felt like we missed a great chance to see that old side of him again. Scott and Dyer who are obviously good friends seem to spend more time talking about things that bother them than really opening up like all the characters ordinarily. I believe Blatty is giving us more a grim, pessimistic, and dehumanized view of the world with III, but by doing so seems to cut off the emotions from reaching full potential carthasis to the audience. Stanley Kubrick was infamous for directing actors to be dehumanized always gave very potent, strong, concentrated, isolated moments of heavy emotion which was essentially the point that will really jump at the audience. In fact, Kubrick was originally one of the directors they asked to direct the original. Yet there does not seem to be really that much indication of that theory here. Scott does have moments where he explodes, but they quickly subside as if nothing happened. Another thing that could have been better explained was Scott’s reluctance to spend time with his family. Even that explanation there gives too much credit. His family seems to really care for him, but not enough is seen to really up the stakes later when the family is threatened. We barely see the family, and suddenly now they’re in trouble? Less of the Gemini’s diatribes would have helped. I’m also not sure why there are so many blasted cameos/guest appearances in this film such as Larry King, Patrick Ewing, Samuel L. Jackson, Silvia Sidney, and even a Child’s Play reference to Brad Dourif.
I think also at times Blatty could have focused less on the character’s conversations to ‘pass time’ and all these regular occurances: ‘”Like what’s your favorite movie?” -“The fly.”, “There’s a cod in my bathtub. I wanna kill it.”, “You’re reading Women’s Daily?”‘ Tarantino does this a lot in his films where people are talking a lot about everyday or unusual things not directly coherent to the story. Though with a film that requires this much explanation and emotional output, it would have been more beneficial to see more of the truth behind the friendships, the family, the corrupted doctors, and Scott’s lack of faith. In fact, most of the exposition comes from the Gemini Killer who talks mostly about how much he loves killing people, the precise specifications to his bloody work, and even random bits of information that doesn’t seem to even motivate Kinderman into staying, and only little bit of the plot is figured out by Kinderman himself. Most of these things are implied, however these emotional human traits are abundant within the original Exorcist. I’m not trying to make a direct comparison here, but that’s why The Exorcist is such a masterpiece. It is due to its great attention to detail in telling the story through people’s woes, emotions, flaws, mistakes, and lack of faith. Exorcist III is more of what Blatty does well as a writer: a heavily detailed account of what goes into science and religion mixed together with complexed descriptions, a lot of technicialites, and theological discussion. Though as a director, I think the writer part got the best of him. This was also his second and last film to date as a director. My favorite bits are always when they refer to the original. I love the new versions of the stair fall, those creepy narrations by Patient X about nightmares of a rose and the fall, and that one bit where the priest makes the connection to the Regan MacNeil exorcism and we hear suddenly a quiet giggle taken directly from that film. I also love that shot of the three helicopters behind the sun– very surreal. I love a lot of the performances in it even though they are a bit inhibited by the complete dehumanization. Miller is my favorite uttering Gemini lines with such joyous ambigiousness like, “It’s a wonderfulL life,” “Little Debbie…. pink…. ribbons in her hair…,” and “You again. You’ve interrupted me. This time you’re going to looooooose,” and then his non-dehumanized (mainly the only really human bits) where he cries, “Ohh Bill!!!” and “We won– now free me.” Dourif is very entertaining with his blasphemous outbursts and with, “Littllle Jaaaack Hornerrr,” and “Ohhh, good…. gracious me… Was I rambling?” Scott is great when he gives us his soul, but then we don’t really know how he feels afterwards. Don’t get me wrong, I think The Exorcist III is entertaining and interesting, but something that only takes one or two viewings to learn everything about it. And I have only seen it three times.
Did you know Blatty originally wanted Carpenter to direct Legion? But when he declined fortunately, Blatty put matters into his own hands. Friedkin denounces all the follow-ups as rip-offs (except Dominion interestingly enough), but he does respect Blatty a great deal. I guess he just has reservations about the studio granting Blatty to do this sequel. I guess Friedkin was like– why bother?
______________Hi Lamont,
I also did write a humorous review on Exorcist II a few years ago. It’ll give you an idea of what I dispised in it as well as some of the bad lines. Here it is. (This one is longer than the Exorcist III review):
_________Exorcist II is one of the worst films I have ever seen. I remember this attrition so vividly, and I didn’t even see this recently. Probably in my top ten of the worst with Manos: The Hands of Fate and Jaws: The Revenge. Yet this film has elements in it that would have been gave some hope of potential, but regrettably it all failed painfully. Exorcist II actually has some good actors in it– Linda Blair (she was really good in the original– nominated for an Oscar too), Shakespearean actor Richard Burton of course, James Earl Jones, Paul Henreid from Casablanca!!! (this was his last film, I feel sorry for him), and even Max von Sydow made his return. For a long time, Friedkin had made sure that none of the cast of his original masterpiece would do what he called ‘a rip off film.’
However, Blair who was 15 at the time said when Goldhart’s script came it emerged as she called it, “so amazing, you would be foolish to say no.” I suppose the situations the characters are placed in: cliff climbs, African expeditions, locusts, and exploding houses sounded pretty exciting. Unfortunately, if young Blair and von Sydow took a better look at it would realize how ridiculous the story unfolds. Von Sydow was actually the only one in the film who was not that bad, but I don’t understand how everyone else is otherwise. Louise Fletcher fresh off her Oscar win for One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest was so utterly bland and tactless, but very similar in her performance from that winning film. I myself think and everyone else at that time of this atrocity started to realize she really didn’t go past being ever so straight-forward and flat– ergo no more career.
It amazes me that The Exorcist being the incredible masterpiece it is could be followed by this _____ (fill in the blank yourself). Not only was Goldhart’s screenplay extremely horrible with ridiculous dialogue, but also was everything else!! People you wouldn’t expect to do a bad job did just that. People have always said The Exorcist suffered a course of demonic incidents, but unlike those freakish encounters the sequels are just plain doomed from disastrous productions. Too many things just don’t fall into place. Boorman’s direction is unforgivably horrendous. William Fraker who photographed Rosemary’s Baby (another great demonic film) did the most unrealistic, over lit (light coming from illogical places– obviously just stage lights up above) and used bad usages of far away HMIs to double as the sun. Bleh. The production design is to literally die for because it’s so bad. The psychiatric hospital in the film looks like an engineer’s worst nightmare filled with ridiculous octagonal shapes everywhere to make it look scientific and glass that reveals the worst stage direction ever!! Little catatonic kids playing with giant metal nut shaped pillows!!! What the HELL?!! And the ESP machine or whatever it is that flashes lights on people looks like an unpreserved prop of the old Star Trek TV show with little scoop lights attached to it like a 10-year old made it for show and tell. It looks like a cereal box with an antenna attached to it with stupid looking bands for people to wear. The editing is also absolutely terrible with the same shots used again to only give you some idea for something to be established and bad dissolves to somehow simulate morphs (but the lapcuts are slightly off laughably) and blatant cuts in movement to remove makeup off of possessed Kukumo. Sound is bad with dialogue off sync sometimes to people’s lips. Oops. The special effects are also utterly horrible with peanuts doubling as locusts, horrible miniatures, terrible overlay work, and fake hearts being ripped out of people’s— stomachs??!!
This just credits more to Friedkin’s brilliance on the original and his great partnership to original author/screenwriter William Peter Blatty. Friedkin knew that calling the demon from what Blatty described in the book would not work on screen. Goldhart and who ever else felt this was the only last bit of the book that wasn’t used in the original and to use the off-screen death of von Sydow’s character as the motivation for this story. Ok one– the name of the demon (which wasn’t the devil after all in the book) was a Mesopotamian god named Pazuzu. Fine. It’s look good on paper, but sounds utterly stupid when blurted out suddenly by Burton. “Pazuzu!!! Spirit of the air and flight lead me to Kukumo!!!” Plus, you have Jones’ character of some survivor of Pazuzu’s possession named Kukumo. You put the two together in the same line it sounds utterly laughable. “Kukumo can lead me to Pazuzu!!!” “Stop this thing….” “Name it.” (pause) “Pazuzu!”
Second thing that irks me is that you don’t need to know how von Sydow’s Father Merrin was killed. In EII, it shows a witchlike Regan metaphysically reach into his body and tickle his heart to death. “Good god,” mutters Father Lamont with overemphasis. THIS is the whole and only reason that Goldhart gives us as to why this movie was made (outside of more money) and why it was necessary for us to see. Pathetic foundations and grounds for a second attempt. There’s another line that’s just plain laughable. An autistic girl asks Blair why she’s at the hospital and she replies, “Oh I was possessed by a demon. Oh don’t worry, he’s gone.” Was this supposed to be a dark comedy or something?
Burton’s Lamont also seems to know exactly what’s going on at times of danger. He blurts out the cause, which kills off whatever poor attempts there even was at mystery. He also seems to know how everything works being he’s only a priest. There’s a scene where Burton is given a sketch of himself that Regan drew with red markings on it. Suddenly, Burton cries out, “The flames! The flames!” He suddenly gets the premonition that there is a fire in the hospital. Slowly but surely, he finds the fire and then starts to distinguish by the first means which is a pair of crutches!!! Him hitting this box looks like Amateur Night, it’s so funny. We also don’t know why this box caught on fire. It just did. Louise Fletcher’s character finally grabs a fire distinguisher after seeing her POV revealing the representation of what Regan drew showing Burton’s head next to flames. Oooh, real scary…. She puts out the fire that causes the smoke to complete engulf the set. Where did they go? I wouldn’t be surprised if that was an on-set accident. At some point later after all the catatonic kids of the hospital freak out and leave the place (note, some are agoraphobics!!! For you kids, that means fear of going outside), Burton goes on a diatribe saying how Fletcher’s new machine is a miracle that predicts the future!! Huh?! Even Wood wouldn’t go that far, and he has intellectual/political messages in Plan 9. As he spats out his own confession, we cut to a bad back screen projection. Don’t know why, they just did, pretending we didn’t notice as the lighting looks completely inappropriate during this night exterior. This hypnotizing thingy he just grabs at one point claiming he knows “where to reach Dr. Tuskin” when she slips into her own bit of ‘catatonia’ and of course saves her while seeing the heart attack flashback. Yes, it’s a flashback seen quasi-movieish, but with no screen. You just see it. I almost had a heart attack myself.
As I’ve counted, there were ONLY four things I found good about that film– and that’s a REALLY bad thing. One, the film has some interesting names cast wise to make it look somehow interesting, which gives you some compulsion to watch it. I fell for it obviously. Two, Linda looking quite cute in this film– she looks about twenty and acts like it– is used to model off the latest fashions of the time. She spends most of time walking around like a runway model, especially during some ridiculous dream sequence cutting back forth between events she wasn’t around to witness with her in a white nightgown in the inevitable overcranked slow-motion. Three, Ennio Morricone music is mostly incredibly bad and bloated, however the romantic theme he gives to Linda Blair’s Regan is actually very beautiful and loving, but it doesn’t save the movie in the least bit. Four, it brought us back to the house for nostalgic reasons. They didn’t quite figure out the 10 essential rules to sequel success yet. HOWEVER, the house is now a giant studio set (and definitely looks like it too) that is not even designed correctly to the original house’s specifications. We spend so much time in Regan’s room in the original I know where the closet was supposed to be and it is not where it is supposed to be in this sh*tty second movie. Why did they build this house instead? Because they had to blow it up and collapse it at the end of the movie. Go figure.
There were also only two times this film actually freaked me out. At one point, Fletcher and Kitty Winn from the original film (who has no point to be in this I may add) are in a taxi when suddenly the windshield breaks very loudly for no reason. At that exact same time, we crosscut to Burton opening the door to Regan’s room which spews out all these peanut locusts. Here’s where it really makes me laugh– the black driver suddenly must have developed super strength and PUNCHES through the windshield to see!! He of course crashes into the house conveniently and then he is killed for no reason! The second scare was the only intellectual one (there are no other potential scares as I can see). Regan opens the door to her old room again (they moved out of course) and a shot very similar from the original is used slightly showing a reveal of a possessed girl sitting on the bed out of nowhere. I admit it freaked me out for a second until Blair’s convoluted reaction.
There’s only one shot in this film I liked and had no purpose in being in this film. It was 180 degree camera move around Regan on the edge of a building to Morricone’s love theme as she stares out at the NYC buildings for no basic reason. That’s it. The only shot.
The most ridiculous moments of the film includes an ESP scene where Regan is tap dancing (again for no reason) and as Burton is being hit with rocks because, of course the locals in Ethiopia suddenly think he is a devil worshiper, she starts reacting to these invisible rocks on stage and falls over in pain. Pazuzu is evidently also an incredibly bad singer and that is how ‘she’ attacks people. There is this really horrible screamed chant that seems to knock people over for unintelligible reasons. At one point, some dude falls off the cliffs for pure reasons of spectacular showcase and crashes into the sides of the rock, however it is way too obvious that this guy is just standing on something and bashing himself into the rocks as he somehow screams with his mouth closed. He then repetitiously twirls obviously on wires, which does not make him look like he is falling at all. Finally, we have our first ‘real’ shot of a guy falling for epic purposes. The bad singing continues as the poor shmuck jumps down off of hills to look like he is still falling and finally falls into a crevice finished off with a planted perplexed face. I may add that this film never leaves the US to film the international locations. It is all accomplish through sets, and the hopes the audience will get it. Well, we get it, but we don’t believe it. All the African locations are sets (Boorman himself inhaled some bad fungal respiratory disease off these African sets which made him very sick for five weeks, and I believed it must have affected his brain as well) and the Vatican City is just some set with a wall painted of multiple Jesuses crucified everywhere. Ok, that’s where a cardinal will work– to be constantly reminded of visual forms of death??! More ridiculous things happen like Burton walking around in a very fake clay village where the locals mistake him for wanting a prostitute, riding a train with Regan where he stares off into space whilst at the same time Fletcher and Wynn’s plane is struck by lighting for no reason, him meeting James Earl Jones who proclaims, “If Pazuzu comes for you, I will spit a leopard.” Huh???!! How is that??! He instead spits what appears to be a tomato which hits a nail bed floor. Ehhhhh??!! Burton then steps on it (the nails, not the tomato) to prove his love for Jesus, which causes him to fall. I’m not being ethnocentric and disrespectful to religion, but certainly the film does by blasting out religious beliefs in front of different cultures. But instead of a quick death which we want, Burton lands in a lab with no explanation what so ever how he got there with James Earl Jones now as a scientist explaining to Burton’s confusion, “maybe it’s the heat.” Horrible mythological attempts. I’ll add that at this time Jones was voicing Vader for Star Wars while doing this film, which he thought this would be a success and Star Wars the failure. Ha-ha.
The Exorcist is about a possession. But no, Regan is not possessed in this. Instead, we encounter the physical form of Pazuzu which now looks like Regan, only sexier thanks to Boorman’s direction. Burton falls into the spells of the temptress spitting out with great sweat on his face, “The wings!!! The wings are brushing me!!! I must!! I MUST!!!” Suddenly, we hear the real Regan (Yes, they’re two now) talk in the voice of James Earl Jones. Now that’s funny. Picture Vader’s voice talking to Blair’s little cute face saying, “We like to call her to good locust. She will evolve to resist the brushing of the wings.” Hilarious. Then Pazuzu talks back with one of Linda’s worst moments in acting, “Once the wings have brushed you… You’re mine forever!!!” She blurts this as she whips her head in classic Farrah Fawcett method. For whatever reason, the Kitty Wynn character finds it necessary to burn herself alive by standing allowing the fires of a gas spill to slowly burn her. It is so obvious the flames are only in the foreground as she turns slowly more and more red. I would assume she’s embarrassed. Actually, Wynn is my least favorite actor from the original as Ellen Burstyn’s secretary because she’s just… there. She tries so hard as an actress, but all her lines and delivery is just so bombastic. It is rumored that Burstyn was asked to play this role in the film as the mother, but since she fortunately declined, they put Wynn’s character back even though she says she won’t stay with them in the end of the original. They try to work this earlier in the film’s essential plot and message, but all it is just a razor-thin plot with a situational showcase of “wow” without the credibility, equivalent to that of most CG moments these days. Eventually, the house explodes and it’s up to Regan to save the day as she simply twirls her arm in the air like Kukumo did whatever years ago as the film demonstrates and suddenly all the locusts die through horrible means of dissolves. I should mention that they search for Pazuzu throughout the entire film because it’s still lurking around near Regan. It turns out is was a particularly huge locust flying in the corner of her old room (cause they say the devil lives in the corners of rooms!!!) in the Georgetown house the whole time (which I don’t know about you, but I usually would notice a giant bug in the corner of my room buzzing about), and we see it only in the beginning of the second act. They should have a got a really big fly swatter. In the end, Burton mutters some moral to this story, and eventually Regan and him walk off literally into the sunset which is actually a back screen projection. YES, EXORCIST II: THE HERETIC is absolutely hellish garbage, comparable to Jaws The Revenge. I don’t know who even was the ‘Heretic’ in that film!!!!
So I say all this if you were able to get through it, as a warning. Save two hours of your life if you don’t want to suffer a sleepless night pontificating what you had just seen. You may get a stomach ache, a headache, a scarred brain from the experience (as you see with me), and even the potential means to vomit. If you want to see this schlock entertainment, by all means but I still issue this warning. I wouldn’t be surprised if this was entertaining enough to influence you people to watch, but whatever I don’t care. I didn’t enjoy the film, but I enjoyed writing this. No, I take that back– I enjoy making fun of this film now that I am used to its disgusting displays. Whew, I’m glad I got this off my chest. I don’t know why this film is sometimes on Bravo. It’s an embarrassment to all acting and all of cinema.
_________
