To do so, he must tap into the repressed memories of poor little Regan (Blair), with the help of her doctor (Fletcher).īlair is top-billed, but it’s undeniably Richard Burton’s movie, and from his opening scene, thundering “SILENCIO! SILENCIO!” at a possessed South American woman, it’s clear that he’s going to make a meal out of this thing. The plot, such as it is, finds Burton’s Father Philip Lamont being dispatched by the Vatican to discover exactly what happened to Father Merrin (von Sydow) after the events of the first film.
Instead, it’s 118 minutes of endless flashy-light hypnotism, staggeringly terrible locust effects, and Richard Burton wandering around what appears to be Tatooine. Boorman is a fine director, but it’s as though no one bothered to tell him he was making a horror movie.
What’s most striking about the film now, decades after its release, is how staggeringly dull it is. On paper, Exorcist II should work - except it shouldn’t, because an Exorcist sequel is a really stupid idea, and this one plays like the blatant cash grab that it is. Maestro Ennio Morricone provides the music. James Earl Jones and Ned Beatty appear in supporting roles. But there’s no shortage of impressive personnel: Friedkin’s shoes were filled by the more-than-capable John Boorman ( Point Blank, Deliverance), who supplemented returning co-stars Linda Blair, Max von Sydow, and Kitty Wynn with six-time Oscar nominee Richard Burton and recent winner Louise Fletcher. Exorcist II: The Heretic, the 1977 follow-up to the 1973 smash, is suspiciously missing both writer William Peter Blatty and director William Friedkin co-star Ellen Burstyn took a pass as well.
Some ideas are so ill-conceived, there may be nothing that can make them work.
#The heretic batman movie#
And in this spirit, Flavorwire brings you the latest installment in our monthly Bad Movie Night feature, and a special Halloween edition, no less: John Boorman’s notorious 1977 sequel Exorcist II: The Heretic. But the most rewarding terrible movies are those we know as “so bad they’re good” - entertaining in their sheer incompetence, best braved in numbers, where the ham-fisted dramatics and tin-eared dialogue become fodder for years of random quotes and inside jokes. There are nearly as many categories of terrible movies as there are for great ones: there are films that are insultingly stupid ( Batman & Robin), unintentionally funny ( Birdemic), unintentionally, painfully unfunny ( White Chicks), so bad they’re depressing ( Transformers), and so on.