Boorman and the Devil chronicles the abject failure of the second Exorcist film.
The documentary Boorman and The Devil plays apologist for one of the WORST horror sequels ever
Boorman and The Devil is a film that exhumes one of the stinkiest pieces of cinematic crap in history and tries to explain how something so wretched could make it into the pop cultural cesspool in the first place. And naturally, the analysis of how The Exorcist II turned into such a colossal pile of excrement is FAR more entertaining than the 1977 film itself.
David Kittredge’s documentary is largely driven by the first hand accounts of director John Boorman. Now, Boorman has made some genuinely great movies in his career, including Deliverance. But from the outset he seemed like the LAST person you would want directing a sequel to The Exorcist.
First of all, he turned down directing the first movie because he didn’t understand the novel and thought it was exploitative and abusive towards children. So why not peg the contrarian that hated an all-time horror classic to helm its immediate follow-up?
Boorman never comes out and directly says it, but I think we all know the answer: money, and lots of it. Keep in mind, before taking the Exorcist II job Boorman had just given us the all time masterpiece of crap Zardoz, a.k.a. “that one movie where Sean Connery runs around in a bikini in a post-apocalyptic hellscape.” That movie, as bizarre as it was, was at least entertaining and kinda-sorta meant to be funny at times. Which are two things you definitely cannot say about the film that would become The Heretic.
So the original Exorcist II script was much different. Apparently it had a lot of weirdo theological metaphysics in it and Boorman pretty much saw it as his opportunity to get all spacey with the visuals and turn it into his equivalent of 2001. Alas, that script ended up getting rewritten over and over, to the point Boorman was pretty much left a table cloth with a few illegible notes on it to film. The movie, simply put, was doomed from the very beginning.
Everybody talks about the original movie being cursed, but holy hell, I think Heretic might give it a run for its money. At one point, production stopped for five weeks after Boorman contracted a rare lung illness — and nearly died from it — on a soundstage in L.A. This, after the studios nixed on-location filming in Africa, the Vatican AND even the original filming location in Georgetown. Deaths, injuries, half the cast being tanked out of the gourd every day and showing up late for filming — it was just misery on top of misery filming this thing.
Maybe the most interesting thing about Boorman and the Devil is how it explains how The Exorcist II pretty much signaled the end of “blind bidding” for American theaters. You see, back in the ‘70s theaters would put in year-early reservations for films that haven’t even gone into production yet. Those upfront fees would usually finance the films directly — and since The Exorcist shattered box office records and its sequel had an all-star cast featuring the likes of James Earl Jones and Richard Burton, why wouldn’t the theater owners of America invest heavily in The Heretic?
Well, we all know what happened. The movie barely makes its original release date and when it does, audiences literally laughed it off the screen. By the second week of its run the word of mouth was so bad that its box office take dwindled away to almost nothing … this, after theater owners signed legally binding paperwork to screen The Exorcist II for a MINIMUM of 12 weeks.
Yikes. Make that double yikes, even.
Of course, Boorman still thinks his film is an unsung classic that was simply misunderstood by the moviegoing masses. So it’s pretty funny to hear actresses like Linda Blair and Louise Fletcher totally lambaste the thing as nigh-unwatchable garbage. I can’t tell you who is right here, but then again, I think you already know the answer.
Boorman and the Devil is certainly a fascinating film. It’s pretty interesting to hear the director try to defend his work despite it being objective trash, and you can tell that 50 years later it STILL hurts his ego to talk about its dismal performance, critically and financially. One thing Boorman and the Devil DOESN’T do, however, is make you want to reassess The Heretic as some sort of misunderstood hidden gem. Even defending his own film Boorman does a bang-up job describing WHY it’s so loathed and disparaged, which is hardly a surprise — to this day, I STILL don’t think he understands what made William Friedkin’s The Exorcist the runaway success that it was (and remains even now.) Speaking of Friedkin, his anecdote about the first sneak preview screening of The Heretic MAKES Boorman and the Devil worth watching all by itself — no spoilers, but it is HILARIOUS.
The great tragedy of The Heretic is how Boorman can’t see his own hubris and how it ensured The Exorcist II was going to be a momentous, industry-changing failure. Compare that movie with William Peter Blatty’s The Ninth Configuration — another box office dud and another weird follow-up to The Exorcist, except Blatty’s movie was actually good and faithfully tied into the ‘73 movie despite being (technically) unrelated to it and being a totally separate genre (although I personally still think it’s horror-comedy, but I’m a minority there, it seems.) The Ninth Configuration was a worthy art-house derivation of The Exorcist and its themes, while The Heretic is a complete misunderstanding and disregard for its own source inspiration.
Imagine a guy who hates ice cream opening up his own ice cream shop. That’s pretty much the story of John Boorman and The Exorcist II.
I can’t say I felt sorry for Boorman after watching this documentary. But I could at least understand what he THOUGHT he was doing, even if it was clearly wrongheaded and destined for ruination. It’s always sad when really smart people can’t see the obvious. And Boorman and The Devil is a perfect illustration of that tragedy.
Oh, and before I forget — you have NO idea how happy it makes me knowing the dude who directed Revenge of the Nerds made the original trailer for The Heretic. Now THERE’s a horror-comedy crossover we sorely needed around 1987 or so …