Director: David Kittredge

This captivating documentary charts the troubled making of the much-anticipated sequel ‘The Exorcist II: The Heretic’ and its disastrous reception on release. Along with candid interviews with stars Linda Blair and Louise Fletcher, filmmaker Kittredge talks at length with the film’s visionary director John Boorman who is frank, only partly cowed by the experience, and proud of his flawed achievement. Boorman was still licking his wounds from the poor reception of his visionary sci-fi picture ‘Zardoz’ when Warner Bros approached him to helm the sequel to the massively popular ‘The Exorcist’. This being mid-70s Hollywood, Boorman was given pretty much free rein with the project, despite the vast amounts of money involved. He imagined the film as a riposte to the original, which would stress the power of good in a story that dealt with a new evolutionary age for humanity. During the picture’s making, Boorman enthusiastically embraced the new Steadicam technology and created ingenious in-camera special effects, fascinatingly broken down here. Alas, the production was beset—‘or cursed’—with problems. The star Richard Burton proved unreliable, there was an incident with imported locusts, and most dramatically, Boorman was struck down with a rare disease after inhaling sand while filming the in-studio desert scenes which left him hospitalised for five weeks. When the film was finally released, it was received as a laughable muddle, with preview audiences reacting violently. There is a wonderful moment when Boorman talks about getting some pithy, and in retrospect, sage advice from Stanley Kubrick. Another when William Friedkin relates an incident, corroborated in this film, about an early screening when the producers of the film are identified by an angry public. It feels a little overlong at almost two hours, and at times the treatment is a little too jocular, particularly the animated scenes, but this is a welcome and stirring reminder of a time when filmmakers were allowed by major studios to take artistic big swings.

David Willoughby

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