August
is a good month for genre fans with a host of long-overdue
back catalogue DVD releases on Region 1. Exorcist II: The
Heretic, the sequel to the Oscar-winning horror film based
on the novel by William Peter Blatty. Directed by John Boorman
(Deliverance) this unnecessary sequel is infamous for being
virtually laughed off the screen when it came out in 1977.
It received such terrible reviews that Boorman pulled it out
of cinemas, re-edited it (allegedly cutting eight minutes
in hopes of getting the story coherent) but to no avail.
Continuing
the story of Regan McNeil and the aftermath of her possession
by the evil spirit Pazuzu, it is four years later and Regan
(Linda Blair) is seeing a therapist (Louise Fletcher) to deal
with the horrifying experience that befell her in the first
movie. Meanwhile, a Vatican investigator (Richard Burton)
is dispatched to investigate the death of Father Merrin (the
exorcist in the original movie) for which he must question
Regan, who is still plagued by bizarre nightmares.
Exorcist
II: The Heretic remains a frustrating experience, a kind of
benchmark for "how not to make a sequel"!!! On the
one hand the movie has great visuals, decent special effects
& a mesmerising soundtrack, and, like the much superior
and genuinely scary Exorcist III, is a bona fide & intriguing
continuation of the Exorcist saga. On the other hand, it's
still totally incomprehensible (even after the re-edit) and
to say the pacing is slow (even for a film of that era) is
possibly the understatement of the century. The acting (bearing
in mind the talent on display and cameos from Max Von Sydow
(from the original) and James Earl Jones (as an African who
was also once possessed by Pazuzu) is woefully below par,
Burton looks bored all the way through and one can only imagine
he needed to pay a bill or buy a new house that week and that
secured his involvement.
A bare
bones DVD release from Warner only adds to the frustration,
as the cut material would have been nice to see whatever,
but all you get with the obligatory trailer is an alternative
opening sequence which, oh dear, is slightly worse and less
coherent than the re-edited existing one! No surprise there
then! For completists, like me (!), only, I'm afraid!!!
Specifications:
Region
1 encoding)
Colour, Closed-captioned, Widescreen
Theatrical trailer(s)
Alternate opening sequence.
Widescreen Anamorphic format
