The Exorcist (William Friedkin, 1973)

[Jean-Luc Garbo]

Is this actually worth getting? I ask because while I'd like to see all of them, I'm particularly keen on the first and third films. Still, this is a deal so it might be worth it.

[Mr Sausage]

Is this actually worth getting?

It's just a package of all the extant Exorcist DVDs out there. I actually bought it just so I could get the original cut of the Exorcist, but ended up being just as delighted with Exorcist III. So it's worth it just for those two. The Version You've Never Seen, Dominion, and The Beginning I can take or leave (tho' they all come in fairly good editions); and Heretic is just horrendous.

[knives]

Ditto on Sausage. Get it only if you need 3 or 1.

[Jean-Luc Garbo]

What did you find so bad about Heretic? I've heard that the acting and script are awful, but I like Boorman and I'm usually up for a bad horror film.

[Mr Sausage]

What did you find so bad about Heretic? I've heard that the acting and script are awful, but I like Boorman and I'm usually up for a bad horror film.

It's a tedious clunker, ludicrous, and played without visible conviction. It does pretty much everything wrong, but the film's real feat is in being so silly and yet at the same time so boring. I wouldn't recommend it: its badness is not the kind you can enjoy.

[Jean-Luc Garbo]

Ha ha. Thanks for the help, Sausage and knives.

[cdnchris]

There's some great "Burton-must-have-been-seriously-hitting-the-bottle-just-before" scenes. But it is pretty awful. It's a shame because there's some good ideas in there somewhere but it's a silly mess of a film, the most ludicrous sequence probably being a moment where James Earl Jones appear in a locust suit.

That set is worth getting, though. I got it for $25 at Costco and it was completely worth it. The original and the third film are great, and Schrader's Dominion is "interesting" enough. The others are all rather terrible.

[HerrSchreck]

I havent seen the second one since I was a kid... and some of the so-bad-it's good raves got me interested in watching the Boorman-- but every cineaste whose tastes are keyed into mine (snobless lovers of high art AND great schlock) warned me not to waste my time. I've viewed snippets on places like Veoh and youtube and I'm afraid sausage and chris are right-- it's just an unmitigated yawn of a disaster. Makes 1st sequels like Beneath The PLanet of the Apes look like Sunrise.

Unlike many I just couldnt get down with Schrader's take on the story-- the kid, the cgi, I just found it all pretty awful too. One and Three are, of course, fantastic.

The "Version You've Never Seen" is a joke, though.

[Person]

I am a huge fan of The Heretic - from a cinematography (Bill Fraker), production design (Richard Macdonald, Joe Losey's PD) and music score point of view. Visually, I find it to be one of the most impressive productions of 70s Hollywood. Hugely budgeted film - one of the highest ever at the time, highly elaborate matte shots by Albert Whitlock at the peak of his genius. It's a treasure trove of cinematic ingenuity. I'd love to read William Goodhart's original screenplay as it is said to be far more intelligent than Rospo Pallenberg's re-write which Boorman himself then re-wrote. Kubrick was originally approached to direct, apparently, so it could have been a far more intelligent, coherent film had wisdom prevailed at Warner Bros.

[colinr0380]

Here is a complete run through of Exorcist II at the Jabootu Bad Movie Dimension site!

I've not yet worked up the courage to see it for myself but I've always liked the comment on the film from one of the critics during their commentary over the Matrix sequels, when they are trying to think of other films that so go off the rails and take their stories in directions that will upset their seemingly in-built audience. I think it is John Powers who says that Boorman's film is amazing on an artistic and ambition level but terrible if assessed as a narrative film that is supposed to make any sense!

EDIT: And what's wrong with Beneath The Planet of the Apes?

[cdnchris]

Unlike many I just couldnt get down with Schrader's take on the story-- the kid, the cgi, I just found it all pretty awful too. One and Three are, of course, fantastic.

I do have to agree on a certain level. I think I found it more interesting as a comparison to Harlin's more action packed version. Like with the second film I liked the ideas it was trying to explore but it is fairly "blah" in the end and I don't know if I have the desire to sit through it again. The film unfortunately peaks during the opening sequence. Harlin's version is far worse in my opinion even if it has better effects. The ending to that one was far more laughable.

[Jean-Luc Garbo]

Visually, I find it to be one of the most impressive productions of 70s Hollywood. Hugely budgeted film - one of the highest ever at the time, highly elaborate matte shots by Albert Whitlock at the peak of his genius. It's a treasure trove of cinematic ingenuity.

Turn off the volume and just analyze the images then? Sounds like a plan. Thanks for that link, colin. This movie sounds unbelievable.

[Mr Sausage]

Here is a complete run through of Exorcist II at the Jabootu Bad Movie Dimension site!

I've not yet worked up the courage to see it for myself but I've always liked the comment on the film from one of the critics during their commentary over the Matrix sequels (when they are trying to think of other films that so go off the rails and take their stories in directions that will upset their seemingly in-built audience). I think John Powers says that Boorman's film is amazing on an artistic and ambition level but terrible if assessed as a narrative film that is supposed to make any sense!

Hah! Reading through that link reminded me of something that really pissed me off when I saw Heretic, and which is a great example of its pure laziness and unconcern: a major plot point is that scientists are trying to breed out the swarm condition in locusts that occurs when their wings are rubbed, which turns into endless metaphysical talk about being brushed by the wings of the locust, and flying on the wings of the locust, and other locust/evil gibberish that is pretty important to the film's symbolism. Fine. Except that it's all completely, farcically wrong. It's the legs, not the wings, that need to be rubbed to produce the swarm effect. It's one thing to play around with general science a bit for effect (ie. that blinking hypnosis thingy which, while very stupid, doesn't feel insulting), but to screw up pretty simple scientific facts, especially important ones your movie revolves around, is incredible.

[HarryLong]

and Heretic is just horrendous.

Nah. It's a hoot.

I think John Powers says that Boorman's film is amazing on an artistic and ambition level but terrible if assessed as a narrative film that is supposed to make any sense!

It certainly derives from a period in Boorman's career when he seems to be more interested in visuals than narrative sense (something we always seem to celebrate in Italian directors like Bava or Argento but refuse to tolerate elsewhere) - ZARDOZ also comes from about the same period - and it has some of the most exquisitely realized and trippy visuals of any movie I've ever seen. Even a plane flight through a thunderstorm is depicted with more sense of visual grandeur than realism.
I can't help but ponder that some of HERETIC is supposed to be funny. Possibly Jones in the locust suit, but certainly the image of Linda Blair, physically reacting to the stoning Richard Burton is getting, while trying to tap dance to "Lullaby of Broadway" during a high school talent show, can't have been meant to be taken seriously.
For whatever reasons I know that I enjoyed HERETIC far more when I saw it in the theater during its initial run than I did the snoozefest of Friedkin's EXCORCIST, which reminded me for all the world of a big-budget William Castle film.

[Person]

I also love Zardoz. Mad, mad movie. But underneath the craziness and Connery in a red diaper, there's a blinding bit of existential, anti-Christian-morality sci-fi wisdom, I feel. But it's worth it simply for that big fucking flying head.

"The gun is good! The penis... is evil! The Penis shoots Seeds, and makes new Life to poison the Earth with a plague of men, as once it was. But the Gun shoots Death and purifies the Earth of the filth of Brutals. Go forth, and kill! Zardoz has spoken."

One of the most outrageous lines in all of moviedom.

[Props55]

Put me down in the pro-HERETIC column. I'll neverforget the Sunday afternoon in July '77 when a friend and I saw it back to back with SORCEROR! Person has enumerated the pedigree on the films visual majesty and Harry has been good enough to point out its deliberate (but to what purpose?) humor. I recall a scene late in the film when Burton gets into a cab and screams at the driver to "take me to the Dixieland Hotel!" It seemed to be a nod to his cameo in CANDY where he plays the drunken poet with the "romantic breeze" forever caressing his Byronic locks. Had the film not been a summer release the line would certainly have been the header on Pauline Kael's review! Also a hoot is the scene where a distant figure gets out of a plane in deep backgound and carries a full size cross into a hut on the studio built African veldt. When he finally enters the foreground and extends a hand to a confused Burton with the introduction, " Hi, I'm (name) and I'm in the religion business!" we realize it's Ned Beatty in a cameo!

What's no fun at all however are the stodgy expositional scenes in the psychological R&D lab run by Louise Fletcher and Kitty Winn. My God! These play as if Boorman shot a half-speed rehearsal with multi-camera set ups and then cut them together! If Burton was loaded Fletcher here appears to be actually stoned! Maybe it's a pun/trope on the "stoning/tap dance" scene Harry described. Who knows!

My advice to anyone interested in seeing this is to approach it as if it were a German silent with sychronized score/sound on disc and forget the dialogue and narrative.

Re ZARDOZ: When I first saw it I considered it an interesting failure. Having seen it now some six or eight times I now consider it to be a near masterpiece. The narrative and tone are much more controlled than HERETIC but the humor is just as sly and more to the point. Both are as essential in my Boorman collection as POINT BLANK, HELL IN THE PACIFIC, DELIVERANCE, EXCALIBUR and HOPE AND GLORY.

[HarryLong]

its deliberate (but to what purpose?) humor

More than a fair question & I don't have an answer. I've heard Boorman loathed the first film & only took on the sequel if WB agreed that he didn't have to duplicate the original in any way (I'm really garbling the proviso, but I'm having a bad memory day). I think I can say with no contradiction that he certainly succeeded on that score.
Maybe rather than "humor" it might be better to term HERETIC a series of outrages perpetuated on the original ...? I recall not liking the film very much when I first saw it until I got to the tap-dance scene & then it just started clicking for me. This particular Boorman film (to which I'd add ZARDOZ and EXCALIBUR) works for me in much the same way that Ken Russell's films work for me - a sense of a director taking outrageous chances with his material; sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't, but he's never playing it safe (& I confess a weakness/preference for films that surprise me rather than just being the same-old same-old).

a distant figure gets out of a plane in deep backgound and carries a full size cross into a hut on the studio built African veldt. When he finally enters the foreground and extends a hand to a confused Burton with the introduction, " Hi, I'm (name) and I'm in the religion business!"

Surely another clue we're not to be taking this entirely seriously.

I also love Zardoz. Mad, mad movie. But underneath the craziness and Connery in a red diaper, there's a blinding bit of existential, anti-Christian-morality sci-fi wisdom, I feel. But it's worth it simply for that big fucking flying head.

Good god, yes. What a visual! And like the star child at the end of 2001, it communicates something on an almost metaphysical level. You may not understand in a logival way, but you feel the explanation (in the parlance of the time, you "grok" it).
And I think much of HERETIC's visuals have the same power. The flights through the (patently miniature) villages ... that crazy church (apparently a real place, though partly recreated in the studio) high up in a cliff ...

[colinr0380]

I like that the banner advert on my trip to the page this time was for some sort of Belle and Sebastian derived album "God Help The Girl"!

I must admit to a huge enjoyment of Zardoz, though I have not seen it in a long time. Of course for the full impact of the quote you've got to imagine it being intoned in a booming voice by a giant floating stone head to a bunch of scantily clad warriors on horseback, with the final punchline being punctuated by shotguns being vomited out of its mouth as a gift! It seems to have influenced a strange variety of films, from the Zardoz head used by the gang in Last House On Dead End Street (a number of different kinds of masks are playfully used throughout the film to anonymise before the murders) to the Time Destroys All sequence of Irreversible (I think the 2001 poster, while an important reference, threw a lot of people off from this other connection), which plays like a version of the Zardoz ending where instead of the next generation growing up and leaving while the parents grow old and die just stays as a potential nascent baby, almost as if it refuses to enter the brutality of the world outside! And there is also the similar dichotomy between the brutal and violent male world and the soft and fragile feminine one, with the idea that underlying both stereotypes are purely animal and sexual impulses.

Trying to get back to Exorcist II now! As someone who cannot really take these concepts seriously I much prefer it when religious themed horrors go really wacky. It seems more truthful somehow! Part of my disappointment with those millenial religious horror films End of Days and Stigmata (or The Sin Eater, Lost Souls or Bless The Child) is that they seem to keep pulling back from ridiciulousness as if worried about their films becoming laughable, little realising that the whole concepts were already ludicrous! I found that over portentousness just diluted the fun potential and made them seem simultaneously ludicrous and dull! I'm very curious to see the end result of Exorcist II but this is part of the reason why I have not approached the Boorman film yet - I do not know how it could live up to the impression I have built up reading reports on it over the years!

In an interesting coincidence I have also just been watching Lucio Fulci's Manhattan Baby again. It has been slowly growing on me with each viewing and would seem to sum up this whole religious curse craze in cinema of the late 70s and early 80s. After an Egyptian prologue in which an archaeologist (along with expendable native guide of course!) defiles a tomb and has laser beams(!) shot into his eyes while his sightseeing daughter is abandoned in a temple by her mother and is handed a cursed medallion by a transparent old lady, the film moves to New York where the couple's children begin to be possessed and take jaunts through interdimensional gateways. The adults that go through these portals do not seem to fare as well though! After a number of suspicious disappearances everything climaxes with an Exorcist style transferrence of the curse to a psychic, who then ends up pecked to death by his suddenly reanimated collection of stuffed birds while the baffled doctors treating the girl in the hospital (including Fulci himself in his customary cameo!) watch bemused as she recovers without the aid of all their hi-tech equipment (they even have a machine that goes *ping!*, that turns out to be of little use!)

The film itself is utterly ludicrous (a favourite moment is when the temporarily blinded father has both eyes covered with bandages and yet still insists on wearing sunglasses!) but quite interesting when seen as a collection of riffs on a theme: The Awakening from a couple of years before (a Mike Newell horror film with Charlton Heston!) had briefly awakened an interest in Egyptian curse horror again after a lull following Hammer's Mummy films and to see that fused with a couple of Omen styled deaths of minor characters and the 'spooky children' genre along with the Exorcist ending leads to some interesting results. Also while there is an extremely hummable main theme a lot of the music cues have been re-used from Fulci's The Beyond and City of the Living Dead, which just adds to the atmosphere of recycling and repurposing. There is even a cyclical downbeat ending which would seem to anticipate the end of Hellraiser by a few years!

[HarryLong]

Trying to get back to Exorcist II now! As someone who cannot really take these concepts seriously I much prefer it when religious themed horrors go really wacky. It seems more truthful somehow!

Oh, I think HERETIC would be just your cuppa. It's not as insane as that Fulci movie you describe - but then few things are as insane as Fulci horror - but it's pretty wild.
And if you like ZARDOZ, I think you'll like HERETIC.

[Antoine Doinel]

The forthcoming BluRay of The Exorcist will contain both cuts =D>

However, it will not be out until "Halloween 2010".

[Matt]

However, it will not be out until "Halloween 2010".

But this more than makes up for that bit of bad news: "The transfers were completed in July, under the supervision of Friedkin and director of photography Owen Roizman..."

[Person]

Good.

[Jean-Luc Garbo]

A little treat for those still on the fence vis-a-vis Heretic. I for one can't wait to see it now.

[HerrSchreck]

That's the old, original trailer-- isn't it?

I got my hands on a copy of it, and I've been trying to get through it over the past few days, but it's real hard going. Some of it is just buttclenchingly bad.

I know there are lots of cineastes whose opinions I respect who think this is the best of the trilogy-- that its not even close-- so I'm going to stick it out to the end.

[Mr Sausage]

I know there are lots of cineastes whose opinions I respect who think this is the best of the trilogy-- that its not even close-- so I'm going to stick it out to the end.

You'll soon be able to say you've seen Richard Burton dry humping Evil Linda Blair while Good Linda Blair watches.