In a handful of respects, there's every chance that Exorcist II: The Heretic may be the most important sequel ever made.
The much-anticipated follow-up to William Peter Blatty and William Friedkin's hugely successful and critically beloved theological thriller got its producers excited and its distributors rabid; nothing else like it had sparked interest like it, with cinema chains breaking records in blind-bidding their way to book the film into theatres over a year in advance.
A sure-fire butt-sitter, who wouldn't want to follow the money line and bet big on it when original star Linda Blair was returning alongside newbies recent Oscar winner Louise Fletcher and bad boy thesp Richard Burton, all helmed by stylish visionary John Boorman?
Its impact was colossal. Laughter echoed through auditoriums when fans realised what Warner Bros. thought they wanted was a continent-hopping adventure on the wings of a locust, where Linda Blair's Regan shares a dark and powerful connection with Ethiopian priest Kokumo (James Earl Jones), and the demon tying them together revealed as the very unseriously-named Pazuzu. Cue tap-dancing montages, strobe-lighting dream delves and quack science of the highest order. Unfortunately influential in a negative sense, few sequels would ever take such a large swing ever again.
So what went wrong? The effects were felt unambiguously, but from page to screen, its long and winding history does not offer any easy answers, nor does David Kittredge's thorough and enlightening documentary, Boorman and the Devil, which instead studiously unpicks the fickle climate of late 70s Hollywood and hands the storytelling over to the surviving cast and crew who weathered its storms.
Anchored by a hilariously sardonic chat with Boorman himself (sat comfortably but grumpily in his lounge, flanked by a Zardoz mask and the titular magic sword from Excalibur), Kittredge assembles a truly impressive roster of voices, from the film's locust wrangler to the mysterious 'creative associate' Rospo Pallenberg to a sparklingly funny Louise Fletcher, making this her last ever project after her death in 2022. Linda Blair also gamely returns to evaluate just how badly The Heretic misunderstood her original character, and how she owned it anyway.
Kittredge does well to mine deep into the film's positive sides. Despite running well beyond
schedule and heinously over budget, there's no denying there was significant and ambitious vision on set. The term 'smoke and mirrors' is extremely apt here, with Boorman recreating the first film's nightmarish exorcism sequence and projecting it in-camera onto a wacked-out Richard Burton, utilising 'ghost glass' in very literal fashion.
Steadicam pioneer Garrett Brown was employed to authentically put the audience in the saddle of a giant locust terrorising the inhabitants of an ancient (and exoticized) African city, the sets of which were the biggest and most expansive to ever hit the Warner Bros. backlot. Like it or not, the money is on the screen, and Kittredge clearly has an appreciation for the team of experts given a blank cheque to go nuts.
The real coup with this lively documentary is how its different threads tessellate to an emotional climax. Kittredge makes sure you're never lost when it comes to the risky business models that Hollywood teetered on at the time, nor does he loosen his grip on the on-set tensions that threatened to tear apart Boorman's team; Louise Fletcher winkingly remarks she didn't appreciate Linda Blair's tardiness, nor the presence of not-quite punch-up script writer Rospo Pallenberg, a character who had no problem telling everyone his name meant 'toad'.
By the time the story reaches Boorman's return after a debilitating sickness caused by dirty sand on the Ethiopian soundstages, it's nail-biting, maybe even moving drama, the story of a heavyweight champ you know is going to be a whimpering underdog in a very short span of time. Handing it over to Exorcist superfans who were there opening day, the retrospective critical panning hits just as hard as it did half a century ago, adding real tragedy to the well-known flop.
Whether or not Boorman and the Devil will change your mind about the inherent worth of Exorcist II: The Heretic is an unknown element. It also hardly matters. The dust has settled and the Exorcist franchise has been pushed and pulled in numerous bizarre directions since; what is The Heretic except its first bum footnote? What this retrospective is certain to do is encourage a little more decorum when talking about it.
For all it is a frequently hysterical folly, the fascinating three-dimensional view Kittredge gives to Boorman's megalomaniacal efforts commands respect. The grace given to The Heretic is amplified by new Exorcist franchise contributor Mike Flanagan giving his two cents on the matter (which will perhaps prove to be an interesting critical chronicle when The Exorcist: Martyrs releases in 2027); meanwhile, world-renowned hater of the film and The Exorcist scholar Mark Kermode is conspicuously absent.
More films should aspire to the balanced and well-read rigor of Boorman and the Devil. As a wider view of Boorman's work, it is vital, placing The Heretic right at the centre as a metamorphosis for the idiosyncratic elder statesman, battering and bruising him but galvanizing him into one of the most interesting of his generation. A riveting raconteur of a picture, it resembles the perfect jury, unafraid to sift through the dirt to reach its just conclusion and gives its maligned subject a fair shake.
The film is currently playing in U.K. cinemas via Blue Finch Film Releasing.