Of course, The Exorcist was a blockbuster smash-hit, eliciting some pretty intense reactions from the viewing public and also a crapload of lawsuits. Naturally, the studio wanted to follow up the film’s success with a sequel — which wasn’t easy. Friedkin and Blatty wanted no part of the project, so the task fell to John Boorman, the director of Deliverance, and Sean Connery’s Future Thong Leaves Nothing to the Imagination, AKA Zardoz.
The result, 1977’s The Exorcist II: The Heretic, was … not good. Reportedly, Boorman was offered the original Exorcist film but turned it down because he found the story “repulsive.” For some reason, despite his distaste for the original, he was handed The Heretic, a film that is both balls-to-the-wall bonkers and incredibly boring. It’s more or less a straightforward continuation of the story of Regan, but this time she’s living at a psychiatric institute where the creepy nurse from One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest hooks her up to some kind of telepathic hypnosis gizmo in order to recover her exorcism memories — which all kind of feels like a backdoor commercial for Scientology in retrospect. Also, James Earl Jones shows up in a giant locust costume at one point. So there’s that.
Cracked/JM McNab
Friedkin alleged that one early preview screening of The Exorcist II abruptly ended after 10 minutes when the audience turned on the Warner Bros. executives and chased them out of the theatre with threats of violence. At the time, The Washington Post speculated that Exorcist II’s crappiness could potentially “cause a major scandal in the movie business” comparing early screenings to the opening of Springtime for Hitler in The Producers — except that play at least became an ironic hit.
Then in 1980, William Peter Blatty wrote and directed a movie that wasn’t obviously connected to The Exorcist at all: The Ninth Configuration. It doesn’t involve Regan, her mother, or even Pazuzu, the foul-mouthed demon, but it does have .. this random dinner party guest?
The 'Exorcist' Series Is Confusing As, Well, Hell
Source: Pinoy Daily News
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