Exorcist II: The Heretic (1977)

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Exorcist II: The Heretic (1977)

Putrid

This is not so much a sequel of the original The Exorcist as it is a rethinking, but director John Boorman (Deliverance) wasn’t thinking when he was rethinking. In this installment, taking place four years after the first film, Reagan (Linda Blair) is seeing Dr. Jean Tuskin (Louise Fletcher) in an attempt to recall dreams she says she can’t remember. Meanwhile, Father Lamont (Richard Burton) has just come back from an exorcism in Africa, and is assigned by the cardinal to investigate Father Merrin’s death. Lamont meets with Tuskin, who engineers a dual-hypnosis between herself and Reagan to probe her recessed memories of the days of her possession by the demon Pazuzu. Lamont becomes both fascinated and repelled by the demon, who (as near as can be told) is still lurking somewhere in Reagan. (Hey, everyone! Here's a nice big scab! Let's all pick away at it!) He continues investigations, which take him all the way back to Africa to search for the boy Merrin originally exorcised, Kokumo (the adult Kokumo is played by James Earl Jones). Meanwhile, Tuskin, Reagan and Reagan’s guardian Sharon (Kitty Winn, from the first film) watch Reagan’s powers of good manifest themselves, and Father Merrin (Max von Sydow, again from the first film) keeps popping up as a ghost to counsel the conflicted father.

That’s as close to a coherent synopsis as is possible with this film, because Exorcist II is anything but coherent. Tuskin, the advocate of science, warns Lamont not to stir up old, painful, repressed memories in Reagan after she just finishes telling Reagan to stop hiding those memories and explore them. Lamont somehow manages to cross the globe in a matter of minutes, going from Israel to Africa to America and back again with no more annoyance than if he were going to the corner grocery store. The church decides to investigate Merrin's death four years after he died, and subsequently denounce the possession they themselves assigned upon him in the first place. The old house in Washington has somehow become a haunted house, and locusts in Africa are supposed to be both a demonic curse and a heavenly blessing, but only if properly engineered. Two questions came to mind here: "What do locusts have to do with anything?" and "Who cares anyway?" These same questions, with subtle variations, could be applied to most of the movie.

Even more disappointing, the actual demon is portrayed by a different actor (since Blair refused to get into full makeup again, although she wouldn’t balk years later when making Repossessed with Leslie Nielsen), and only makes a couple of key appearances in the entire film—and tame ones, at that. You won’t hear any demonic voices yelling “Let Jesus fuck you!” or other obscenities that manage to terrify because of their very vulgarity, but you will hear a lot of spiritual mumbo-jumbo and harmless wannabe demonic shrieks. All of the acting, especially Fletcher’s, is abysmal, and although there are a couple of effective superimpositions of the demon and Reagan during one of the hypnosis scenes, there isn’t nearly enough merit to justify this turkey ever having graced the silver screen. Creator William Peter Blatty (who isn’t even given a direct writing credit) did a better job engineering horror with Exorcist III in 1990-—with this movie, Boorman seduces us with boredom (pun definitely intended) and has us screaming for the conclusion.

-Long