Flashback: the Exorcist sequels and prequels (1977-2005)
Four films, four completely different versions of what happened before and/or after the original movie.
The Exorcist is celebrating its first half-century this year, and yesterday I took a look at some of the things I’ve written about that film over the past 20-odd years.
Today I’m looking at the film’s first two sequels and first two prequels.
The sequels—1977’s Exorcist II: The Heretic and 1990’s The Exorcist III—took the series in completely different directions, both storywise and aesthetically.
Exorcist II: The Heretic follows the ongoing story of Regan MacNeil, the girl who was possessed in the original film—and who, we learn, might still be the focus of demonic attention four years later. Along the way, flashbacks reveal how Father Merrin, one of the two priests who died in the original film, dealt with the demon Pazuzu when they first encountered each other several years earlier.
Meanwhile, The Exorcist III follows Lt Kinderman, the homicide detective from the original film, as he investigates another series of possession-related murders—some of which seem to be targeting people who were involved in Regan’s case. Along the way, he discovers that the body of Father Karras, the other priest who died in the original film, was taken over by the spirit of a serial killer.
I have never written formal reviews of the sequels, but I did write some very informal notes about those films at the Arts & Faith discussion board back in 2004. That discussion board no longer exists, so I figured I’d re-post my comments here, the same way I re-posted my comments on the original film yesterday.
First, I wrote about Exorcist II: The Heretic on August 18, 2004:
Now, how about moving on to Exorcist II: The Heretic (1977). What a goofy film (though I don’t know that I would say it was the second-worst film of all time, second only to Plan 9 from Outer Space, as the Medved brothers’ Golden Turkey Awards did). This sequel gets the original film wrong in just about every possible way.
First, the relationship between science and spirituality. The first film pounded away at the idea that we were living in an overly mechanistic age, that we desperately needed to recover a sense of spirituality that went BEYOND the machines and the rationalism of our times. So, naturally, the second film revolves, in part, around a machine that can read people’s minds and enable them to read each others’ minds and thus come in contact with the demons within them. The fact that this machine appears to consist of nothing more than a couple of headbands, some wires, and a pulsing lightbulb doesn’t help matters any—in fact, when you consider how brutal and almost documentary-like the first film’s exploration of medical technology was, it’s strange to see the second film go in such a silly sci-fi direction, with the tackiest of special effects.
Second, the relationship between humans and animals. The demon in the first film makes animal noises and twists Regan’s body into animal shapes to undermine her humanity; this is even more pronounced in the book than it is in the film, I think, and I think it’s significant that one of the scenes restored to the original film in the extended “writer’s cut” (as opposed to “director’s cut”) is the scene in which Father Merrin says the point of the demon’s attack is to make us “see ourselves as animal and ugly.” But the second film, I think, blurs the line between animal and human, especially in the case of an African “healer” named Kokumo (James Earl Jones), who wears animal hides and is revealed to be the FIRST person exorcised by Merrin, roughly a dozen years before the first film took place.
Third, this film tries to fill in gaps that the first film wisely left unfilled. First, there is the African exorcism (and because Max von Sydow wore so much make-up to look older in the first film, here, in the flashbacks, he is allowed to look more or less like his normal self). Second, we actually SEE how Merrin died, and the dull framing of the shot—Merrin standing on the far left, demon-possessed Regan wagging her tongue at the far right—is completely lacking in menace or terror or what have you, even though the sets and the costumes all look identical to how we saw them in the first film. (This contrast in tone between the first two films is especially pronounced if you watch them back-to-back!)
I would add that one of the brilliant things about the original novel was the way it left BOTH of the priests’ deaths somewhat mysterious, and while I can understand that the first film wanted us to identify with Father Karras and to know more about the reasons for his passing, I would say it was wise of the first film to leave Father Merrin’s death more of a mystery, since he was always a somewhat mysterious character anyway. The second film, on the other hand, doesn’t want there to be any mystery at all. (It will be interesting to see how Exorcist: The Beginning handles Merrin’s early years, and to see whether any mystery is left in THAT film’s portrayal of Merrin, and to see just how badly it contradicts Exorcist II: The Heretic in the continuity department.)
It is tempting to suppose that this film was inspired, to some degree, by The Omen, which came out one year earlier; it has some of that film’s cheesy prophecy fulfillments and the like (such as the scene in which someone happens to see a priest battling a fire, and the flames behind his head, when seen from that particular point of view, look EXACTLY like the flames surrounding the face of a priest in a picture sketched by another character). Three of the actors from the original film came back for the sequel—Max von Sydow, Linda Blair, and Kitty Winn—and while I’ve already talked about von Sydow, and while I’ll get to Blair in a minute, it seems to me that the Kitty Winn character is the most Omen-ish here. Kitty Winn plays Sharon, a woman who works for Chris MacNeil, and who doesn't get a whole lot of attention in the first film but is described in the novel as something of a spiritual flake. (From pp. 26-27: “‘Gee, it’s time for me to meditate, Chris,’ [Sharon] said. Chris looked at her narrowly with muted exasperation. In the last six months, she had watched her secretary suddenly turn ‘seeker after serenity.’ It had started in Los Angeles with self-hypnosis, which then yielded to Buddhistic chanting. During the last few weeks that Sharon was quartered in the room upstairs, the house had reeked of incense, and lifeless dronings of ‘Nam myoho renge kyo’ (‘See, you just keep on chanting that, Chris, just that, and you get your wish, you get everything you want...’) were heard at unlikely and untimely hours, usually when Chris was studying her lines. ‘You can turn on TV,’ Sharon had generously told her employer on one of these occasions. ‘It’s fine. I can chant when there’s all kinds of noise. It won’t bother me a bit.’ Now it was transcendental meditation.”) Ellen Burstyn, who won an Oscar in 1975 for Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore, wisely decided not to be part of this sequel, so Sharon appears in the film as someone who looks after Regan while Chris is off shooting a film somewhere. And there is a moment at the end of the sequel when Sharon does something unexpected which seems to suggest that she is one of the devil’s agents or something—it’s the sort of twist ending that I might have expected from one of the Omen films, but not from any film claiming to be a follow-up to The Exorcist.
Like I said, Linda Blair is back, too, but whereas in the first film she was a normal girl with the sort of melancholic disposition that you might expect of any child whose parents have just split up, in the second film she’s just a bubble-headed teenager who, when asked by a young girl why she is seeing a psychiatrist, replies perkily, “I was possessed by a demon! Oh, it’s okay, he’s gone now!” The psychiatrist in question, BTW, is played by Louise Fletcher, who had just won an Oscar in 1976 for One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest—she should have followed Burstyn’s example and stayed away from this one.
The other major player in this film is Richard Burton (a Golden Turkey Awards winner for ‘Lifetime Achievement Award: The Worst Actor of All Time’), fresh off his second divorce from Elizabeth Taylor. Burton plays yet another priest who doubts his faith, one who has been assigned to investigate the death of Father Merrin to make sure there is nothing about it that might embarrass the Church. Along the way, he partakes of that mind-reading machine and witnesses the death of Merrin, after which he utters the wonderfully cheesy line (made even more wonderfully cheesy by his delivery of it), “It was horrible. Utterly horrible. And fascinating.” Those three sentences could sum up this entire film, actually.
Let’s see, what haven’t I mentioned yet? (1) The premise behind this film is that Merrin believed we were on the verge of a new phase in human evolution, a phase that would see the rise of “healers”—and, as Merrin asks himself, “Does great goodness draw evil upon itself?” In other words, both Regan and Kokumo are part of that cutting edge in human evolution, and that is why they were both possessed—so, once again, an aspect of the first film that was left mysterious is explained in the second film, and in a way that reeks of bad writing. (2) There are some goofy close-ups of locusts in flight; I believe one of these scenes is preceded by a semi-possessed Regan telling Burton’s character, “Come, fly the teeth of the wind. Share my wings.” (3) The scenes of tribal Africa are among the hokiest, dumbest-looking fake outdoors shots since the original Star Trek. (4) John Boorman directed this film, and the friend with whom I watched it tells me this is why there seems to be a more pronounced emphasis on breasts in this film, both naked (in the case of the one African woman) and clothed (in the case of the psychiatrist, whose “heart” is stroked by Regan and the demon at the same time in an admittedly impressive double-exposure shot; and in the case of, well, Regan, who is frequently framed in ways that accentuate her figure, and who is first seen bouncing cheerily at a tapdancing audition—and oh, yes, she WILL have a demon-inspired fainting spell while tap-dancing ‘The Lullaby of Broadway’ in front of an audience). (5) The cardinal who gives Burton’s character his job is played by Paul Henreid, i.e. Casablanca’s Victor Laszlo, in his very last screen role.
There’s probably more, but I think I’ve exhausted my notes, and then some. I’ll get to the third film later.
And then, I wrote about The Exorcist III on August 19, 2004:
I am a very bad journalist. For weeks now, I have had a library copy of William Peter Blatty’s Legion (1983) in my possession, and despite the looming arrival of a new Exorcist movie, I have not found the motivation within myself to read more than 50 pages or so of this 269-page novel. Ah well. Since the preview screening for Exorcist: The Beginning is just a few hours away, I might as well wrap up my comments on the first three films and post a few thoughts on The Exorcist III (1990), which Blatty himself directed from his own screenplay based on Legion.
For some reason I find myself thinking of The Godfather Part III. As with that film, so with The Exorcist III—both films were released in 1990, and both films were third chapters in franchises that had seen parts one and two come out way back in the 1970s. As I said in an earlier post, I found The Exorcist III to be better-made than Exorcist II: The Heretic, which of course isn’t saying much really, but oddly enough, I did not find the third film as much fun to watch as the second—while the second film is so bad it’s mesmerizing, the third film takes itself seriously and, apart from one or two really good scenes, is pretty dull; despite some tedious and seemingly endless monologues by the villain, the film doesn’t even begin to address the intriguing “problem of evil” issues that are laid out very explicitly in the opening pages of Legion (and again in the epilogue to that novel—yes, I did peek, but only after seeing the film).
Even stranger, The Exorcist III begins on a note that implicitly evokes the second and much-maligned entry in this series. Just as Exorcist II ends with a plague of locusts streaming through Regan’s bedroom door, The Exorcist III begins with a plague of locusts (or some such insects) streaming into a church—and while the Jesus on a crucifix opens his wooden eyes, no less. Pretty chintzy, really, especially for a film that deliberately avoids any explicit reference to its predecessor.
Nothing in The Exorcist III explicitly contradicts Exorcist II: The Heretic, actually. The second film followed the MacNeil household and fleshed out Father Merrin’s back story, but the third film is about a murder mystery that is being investigated by Lt. Kinderman (George C. Scott, filling in for the late Lee J. Cobb), and which ultimately leads back to Father Karras (Jason Miller). That’s right, rumours of Father Karras’s death after the first film may have been exaggerated: while it seems he really did die, it also seems that his body has been taken over by the spirit of a long-dead serial murderer (Brad “Wormtongue” Dourif); this body is now kept in a straightjacket in a lunatic asylum, but the killer occasionally possesses other asylum inmates as well and commits murders through their hands. And the particular victims this killer targets are people who were associated with the demonic possession which Fathers Merrin and Karras gave their lives to end.
Some strange continuity problems here. First, chronology; Blatty’s first novel came out in 1971, the sequel in 1983, and the characters explicitly state that 12 years have gone by; however, the first film came out in 1973, and the third film in 1990, but the characters explicitly state that 15 years have gone by, and Father Karras’s tombstone says he died in 1975, instead. Similarly, one of the murder victims is a person whose MOTHER is said to have been involved in the Regan case—she was the one who examined the tape with Regan speaking in reverse—but in the first film, it is a MAN who examines the tape. Small details, perhaps, but that just makes their unnecessarily revisionistic nature stand out all the more. More seriously, Kinderman tells someone that Father Karras was his “best friend”, which is ridiculous—I can appreciate that the new film might need to play up Kinderman’s connection to Karras in order to make Kinderman CARE more about the case, and thus to increase our OWN personal emotional investment in the story, but the fact is, the two characters barely met each other in the first film, and I wouldn’t even call them “friends”, much less “best friends”.
I actually haven’t got much else to say about this film. There is a dream sequence here which pales, BIG time, in comparison to the dream sequences in the original film; the fact that it features a cameo by Fabio doesn’t help, either. I think we also catch a glimpse of a statue that looks like The Joker—which must have been especially distracting when this film first came out, so soon after Tim Burton’s Batman (1989).
Oh, and a couple other pop-culture references, courtesy of the IMDb: When Dourif’s character is asked how he gets in and of the asylum, he replies, “It’s child’s play”—which is cute, since Dourif has provided the voice of Chucky ever since the first Child’s Play came out in 1988. Similarly, the university president says his favorite movie is The Fly (but which version?) ... and the actor who plays him, Lee Richardson, had appeared in The Fly II (1988).
So, one FANTASTIC film, one hilariously BAD film, and one boringly kind-of-okay film. It will be interesting to see where the new film(s) fit on this spectrum.
And that takes us to the prequels, which came out in the mid-2000s.
The history behind those films is a little convoluted.
Initially, the company that owned the Exorcist sequel rights hired Paul Schrader—the writer of films like Taxi Driver, and the director of films like Hardcore—to direct a film that would explore Father Merrin’s first encounter with Pazuzu, years before the original film took place. This territory had already been explored in Exorcist II: The Heretic, but the new film was set to ignore that movie completely.
Schrader finished his film and showed it to the production company, but they didn’t like it—so they hired Renny Harlin, the director of such films as Die Hard 2, Cliffhanger, and Deep Blue Sea, to make a completely new movie, using the same sets, the same cinematographer, and several of the same actors.
The Harlin film, Exorcist: The Beginning, got a regular wide release in August 2004 and grossed $78.1 million worldwide, making it one of Harlin’s bigger hits.
And then, the studio figured it might as well try to make a few bucks off of Schrader’s film anyway, since they already had it sitting on the shelf—and so Dominion: Prequel to the Exorcist got a limited release in May 2005 and made a piddling $251,495.
And thus, we now have three films—Exorcist II: The Heretic, Exorcist: The Beginning, and Dominion: Prequel to the Exorcist—that offer three completely different versions of what Father Merrin’s first encounter with Pazuzu in Africa was like.
I reviewed both of the prequels for the Christianity Today website, but the reviews are now behind a paywall, so I re-posted them to my blog about a decade ago. Instead of re-posting them again here at Substack, I’ll just link to them, like so:
I reviewed Exorcist: The Beginning in August 2004; a somewhat modified version of this review also ran in BC Christian News, or at least on its website.
And I reviewed Dominion: Prequel to the Exorcist in May 2005.
And that about covers it for all of the Exorcist franchise’s existing theatrical releases. The next one, The Exorcist: Believer, comes out tomorrow night—and if I’m not mistaken, it will ignore all the other sequels and prequels, just as they ignored each other. (It’s directed by David Gordon Green, whose recent Halloween trilogy ignored all of the previous Halloween films except for the original 1978 film.)
But first, we’ve got another “flashback” to get through… this one TV-themed…
More details tomorrow.