By From practically the moment that it first hit theaters in June of 1977, “Exorcist II: The Heretic,” John Boorman’s follow-up to William Friedkin’s enormously successful 1973 adaptation of William Peter Blatty’s best-seller, has been written off as one of the biggest and most baffling disasters in Hollywood history.
In many ways, the virulence it received from critics and audiences alike was not entirely off the mark. Instead of giving viewers the kind of straightforward continuation of the first film that they might have logically expected, Boorman—who had spurned the chance to direct the original because he felt that it was only about torturing a child—presented them with an audacious narrative that presents its supernatural premise of a girl possessed by a demonic presence as an ambitious, highly metaphysical and visually startling take, more fever dream than nightmare.
Alas, moviegoers back then were clearly not in the mood for such a super-trippy take, and after an understandably huge opening weekend, what was once expected to be a blockbuster instead disappeared from theaters. To this day, many still regard it as not just one of the worst horror films or worst sequels ever made, but one of the worst films of any kind to ever hit the screen.
But what if “Exorcist II” wasn’t just a bizarre sequel to one of the most successful films ever made? What if it was, in fact, an example of an enormously gifted filmmaker who was given the chance to make a borderline experimental commentary/critique on a work that bothered him on some basic level, given every possible resource by studio executives who didn’t bat an eye at the weirdness? What if what Boorman’s film was closer to the likes of Martin Scorsese’s “New York, New York,” Steven Spielberg’s “1941” and Michael Cimino’s “Heaven’s Gate”—lavishly-funded projects from gifted auteurs that helped hasten the end of the New Hollywood era of the 1970s but which have been reappraised decades later? What if “Exorcist II: The Heretic” was actually great?
That is the premise behind “Boorman and the Devil,” a fascinating new documentary from David Kittredge that takes a look at the entire startling history of “Exorcist II” from its ambitious beginnings to its tumultuous production to its disastrous reception, including a preview screening in which the audience not only revolted against the film but drove the studio executives in attendance out of the theater. He does so through vivid recollections from many who worked on it, from Boorman and co-stars Linda Blair and Louise Fletcher (who passed away in 2022) to several crew members.
In addition, there is also commentary from a number of critics and observers, including filmmakers Joe Dante, Karyn Kusama and Mike Flanagan, who make the case that while the film might have failed as a sequel to “The Exorcist,” it displayed such a unique cinematic vision that it deserves reconsideration. Whether that will actually happen remains to be seen, of course, but as someone who has always felt “Exorcist II: The Heretic” is one of the boldest works from a filmmaker not known for playing it safe, Kittredge has more than made the case for it.
Having toured the world on the festival circuit, where it often screened alongside the film at its center, “Boorman and the Devil” is finally opening commercially. Recently, Kittredge sat down with RogerEbert.com to talk about his film, the genius of John Boorman, and why crazy cinematic swings like “Exorcist II: The Heretic” matter.
AUTHOR’S NOTE: I can be briefly glimpsed in the film, albeit blurred, and I am thanked in the end credits. In addition, contributor Simon Abrams also appears as one of several critics offering on-screen commentary.
When did you first see “Exorcist II: The Heretic” and what knowledge did you have about the film’s history and reception when you did watch it?
The first time I saw “Exorcist II: The Heretic” was on Betamax—the big clamshell from Warner Brothers—and it was the European cut, the shorter one, not the original U.S. theatrical release. That one didn’t have a lot of the stuff that the film is most infamous for—there is no tap dancing, and in that cut, Richard Burton doesn’t live. I hadn’t seen a John Boorman film, but I knew he was a noted filmmaker. I knew that it was infamous.
I knew that it was indicated in “The Golden Turkey Awards,” that Medved book, as the second-worst movie ever made, which is absolutely fucking ludicrous, but whatever. I watched it, and I was intrigued by it and fascinated by it, but I didn’t really love it, mostly because it didn’t feel like a sequel to “The Exorcist”—I didn’t know what it was. It was kind of a weird, trippy hard left turn into surrealist filmmaking in a way.
It wasn’t until the mid-’90s, after I was out of college and living in New York, when Warner Home Video came out with the full cut on VHS, the original theatrical version that hadn’t been available since its opening weekend. That version really resonated with me because, even with its issues, I found it a fascinating and ambitious swing of a movie, and I became obsessed with it. I tried to figure out how they did this and what they were trying to do. The more I learned about the film, the more intriguing it felt and the more inspired I got.
In 2017, my friend Jeffrey Schwartz, a documentary filmmaker who actually has this great film out now about “Cruising” called “Mineshaft,” had been on me for a number of years to do a documentary on “Exorcist II” because he knew that I was so fascinated by it and by the stories behind it. I didn’t want to do it because documentaries are a lot of work, but he basically told me, “If you don’t do this and soon, this story is never going to be told.”
I knew he was right, and I didn’t want to live in a world where this story wasn’t told because I just find it so fascinating in any number of ways. Not just the movie itself but how it was made, and not just how it was made but the fact that it was made—the fact that Warner Brothers put their biggest budget ever behind this movie, this huge departure from the highest-grossing film in their history and the third-highest-grossing film of all time.
Even in its earliest phases, the film was going in a completely different direction from its predecessor—the fact that they were willing to take that chance and spend a lot of money on it is really amazing. At the end of the film, you have a roll call of wildly ambitious and expensive auteur-driven New Hollywood films from that era—things like “At Long Last Love,” “New York, New York,” “1941” and “Heaven’s Gate”—and “Exorcist II” fits in perfectly amongst them.
The sheer force of ambition behind those movies and the fact that the studios kind of met those auteurs where they were and gave them the financing to do it, like Scorsese with “New York, New York” or Spielberg with “1941” or William Friedkin with “Sorcerer.” My argument, if there is an argument in this film, is that we need to give brilliant directors the latitude to potentially make a disaster if we want anything good. You hope it isn’t a disaster, but I think that if you don’t have something like “Exorcist II: The Heretic” in your work, you are kind of doing it wrong. To me, it means you aren’t risking enough. If you don’t fail at least once in your career, you’re playing it a little too safe.
In the film, you reach out to a wide variety of people involved with the project, ranging from well-known names like Boorman and co-stars Linda Blair and Louise Fletcher to a number of below-the-line crew members. How did you go about rounding these people up and convincing them to take part in discussing a subject that might have still been touchy for them?
Boorman was the first interview we did, so once people heard he was part of it and an enthusiastic supporter of the film, nobody really questioned it after that. The first interviews were with Boorman, then Rospo Pallenberg, then Linda and Louise, and once we had those guys, it was all kind of gravy. Certainly none of the crew said no, especially once they heard about the people we had already interviewed. I think there was one camera operator that just said “I don’t remember anything,” but other than that, it was kind of a love fest. This was a movie that was made fifty years ago, and they recalled it like it was yesterday.
This was such a profoundly formative production for all these people, some of whom have gone on to have insane credits. You look at Victor Tsu’s credits or Ron Vargas’s credits—they have been on everything—and for them to remember this particular movie that has this horrible reputation so well is because they put their heart and soul into it. Boorman inspired everybody to bring their A-est of A games, and they did, which is why I think it was so painful for everybody, even down through the crew, how the movie was received.
These people care about their work. They aren’t just collecting a paycheck. It is much easier to work in many other industries than in the entertainment industry. These people love movies, and they thought they were making a great movie.
Maybe the most surprising moment in the film occurs during the segment discussing the infamous preview screening, when the audience not only turned on the movie itself but chased the studio executives in attendance out of the theater. You use footage of William Friedkin recounting what happened during an appearance at the Chicago Film Critics Festival, and when he told it, I assumed he was exaggerating significantly. However, you then interweave that recounting with an interview with someone who attended that same screening, and their two accounts do indeed line up.
One part of that story has been disputed, but only one. That was the claim that the executives were chased down the street at the very end. That has been contested, but other than that, everything else that he said has been supported by other people that we talked to. Someone stood up and said, “The people who made this piece of shit are in this theater!” pointed to where they were sitting in the back, and other people chased them as they left to yell at them, but it wasn’t a mob. I didn’t know any of this when we were making the film, but it was a great story, so we animated a mob chasing the Warner Bros. executives. Apparently that may not have happened or may not have happened quite like that—they may have been chased by a couple of people. I don’t know, but that is the extent to which I don’t know.
Are there stories about the making of the film that you simply were not able to find a place for in yours, and will we be seeing them as a bonus feature when it comes out on Blu-ray?
It is funny you mention that, because I just delivered the bonus features for the Blu-ray that is going to happen. This will be months from now—I don’t want people to wait for the Blu-ray and not see it in theaters—and there are about two hours of stuff.
There are a couple of stories in there that I find very entertaining, but we just couldn’t use them in the film. There was one about Richard Burton breaking into a bar with a fire axe—that was fun, but we had so many Richard Burton stories, and I have already seen in reviews that there is a perception that I beat up on Richard Burton. We had so many stories about Burton that we were astonishingly nice, given some of the things that happened on that set, and I would push back at anyone who thinks we were Burton-bashing.
Directors John Boorman (l) and David Kittredge (r).
Do you think that if “Exorcist II” had come out at a different time that it might have had a better chance of being accepted by audiences, or was it always going to be more or less doomed on the basis that it did not give audiences what they would have not unreasonably expected from something called “Exorcist II”?
I don’t know. I’m often asked whether the title was an issue or whether it was all about audience expectations, and I think it was a perfect storm of a lot of things. If I were a Warner Brothers executive and had been given that film, I honestly would have done what they did. The film would have been hated less if you’d called it “The Heretic” and kind of intimated that it was a follow-up to “The Exorcist,” but not really hung your hat on it. I don’t think it would have opened well, and it still would have failed at the box office because it is a flawed film. I do love this film and certainly spent enough years making a documentary about it, but it is flawed. The most interesting thing about it is that so much ambition and energy went into it, along with so many big creative swings.
My view is that whether these swings work for everyone all the time is not really the point. The point is “What are you doing with your work and your art? Are you doing something different and interesting and taking risks and chances?” This is one of the riskiest films I have ever seen. It would have been nothing for them to spend a quarter of the budget to make another movie about another possessed kid somewhere and just redo the first one somehow without hiring Linda Blair or any big stars. They would have made bank, and they didn’t. Instead, they took this huge risk on this very involved story about metaphysics and the world mind and people coming together in the next phase of evolution and giving Reagan a character. It’s really impressive to me how much they tried and how much they risked—that was pretty much the main inspiration for this documentary.
When you have been screening “Boorman and the Devil” at festivals, it’s often been shown alongside “Exorcist II” itself. When those audiences, most of whom are probably on the younger side, see it, how do you see them reacting to it? One aspect I was particularly curious about was how “The Heretic” tackles the original’s dubious sexual politics. That film could be read as a conservative reaction to things like feminism and the sexual revolution, in which the only cure for such ills is Catholicism.
Or even more reductive, when the shit hits the fan, what is going to save you is not your doctors or science or your secular movie star friends. It is going to be the old guy in the priest’s outfit reading the ancient texts. It is a very conservative and patriarchal message. “Exorcist II” is the opposite. “Exorcist II” says that science and religion, at their best, are trying to do the same thing—they are trying to search for truth and should work together. It has a very pro-feminist and progressive message.
Horror, as subversive as it is, tends to have a more conservative bend if you look at it in any kind of skeptical way. Who are the kids getting killed in the slasher movies? The ones off having sex and doing drugs. The Final Girl is always the virgin who doesn’t smoke pot or whatever. You can go through a lot of horror and kind of boil it down to kind of a conservative and patriarchal message. “Exorcist II” a.) I would argue is not even a horror movie and b.) is the opposite of that. It is not just a one-stop shop message about religion knowing everything—it is religion and science and wisdom and humanity. It is a very humanist movie.
At the beginning, it kicks things off with a failed exorcism, and at the end, good triumphs once the forces of science, religion, and feminism come together as one. Well, depending on which version you are watching.
That is important. I tell people that if you love the movie, you definitely want to see both the shorter version and the longer one, but the longer one is more cohesive and coherent. It is a really involving and valuable film, and even if you don’t like it, laugh at it, or it doesn’t work for you, there is so much in it that is brilliant and amazing. Even just from a technical filmmaking perspective, those ghost glass shots and the fact that all that stuff was done live with a two-way mirror and two sets—that is artistry of the highest order.
It really is one of the most visually impressive films that I have ever seen, and Boorman is certainly no slouch in that department.
No, he is amazing. “Excalibur” alone is amazing. The 4K that Arrow just put out is astonishing, and I am not just saying that because I have a commentary track on it. It is literally one of the most visually astonishing films I have ever seen.
Even a smaller film of his like “Where the Heart Is,” one that doesn’t have big battles and things like that, is absolutely gorgeous to look at throughout.
It really is, and it is so inventive. I don’t think that movie works, but it is really cool to watch. I’d rather have one movie like “Where the Heart Is” than ten that are fine but which don’t try anything. “Where the Heart Is” is trying a lot of stuff. Even with the plot, you are watching it and thinking, “This is going there?” I remember seeing it for the first time and having no idea where it was going, and by the end, you are thinking that you weren’t expecting any of that.
Finally, has Boorman seen “Boorman and the Devil” yet and, if so, what were his thoughts on it?
Yes, he has, and he has been very gracious. I don’t have the quote from the email in front of me, but he was very moved by it and very happy with it. This was all quite emotional for him. I didn’t want to press that because this was a film about one of the greatest traumas of his life, at least career-wise, and he didn’t have to be that open with me in that interview. He didn’t have to tell me all that stuff and talk about his life and art and his theories about cinema.
That was just a gift, and after that interview, it didn’t matter how long it would take—I had to finish this movie, and it had to be one of the best movies ever made about making a movie, and I am not going to stop until it is. I hope we got somewhere up there.
