After The Exorcist (1973) became a cultural phenomenon and landmark piece of cinema, it’s natural a sequel would come about.

British director Sir John Boorman took the helm for this one and the result was a bit of a disaster.

Whilst Exorcist II: The Heretic (1977) isn’t “the worst film ever”, as many film critics have claimed, it certainly isn’t a good film either. Let’s explore it to discover how it managed to get things so wrong.

Metaphysical Madness in Exorcist II: The Heretic

The curious thing about that trailer is it gives the impression Exorcist II will be fast-paced and dramatic. It is anything but.

The main issues with this film are it is:

• Boring
• Directionless
• Nonsensical
• Stupid

The narrative is a dull metaphysical mess. It also isn’t scary in the slightest, which is kind of a core problem for a horror film like this (the attempts at scaring people resulted in laughter during its first screenings).

Narrative wise, we follow priest Father Lamont (Richard Burton) who’s struggling with his faith. Whilst in Latin America he attempts an exorcism, but this results in a girl and an entire room going up in a ball of flames.

After this screw up he’s assigned by the Cardinal the role of investigating the death of Father Lankester Merrin from four years back (i.e. the first film), who died during the exorcism of demon Pazuzu who was occupying the 12-year-old Regan MacNeil.

Here we catch up with the now 18-year-old Regan (Linda Blair), whose mother seems to have disappeared (this doesn’t seem to be explained in the film).

Instead, she’s staying with her guardian from the first film Sharon Spencer (Kitty Winn).

Regan also gets assistance from a psychiatric institute headed by Dr. Gene Tuskin (Louise Fletcher fresh from her Oscar winning performance as Nurse Ratched in 1975’s One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest).

Fletcher had a striking similarity to The Exorcist star Ellen Burstyn (Regan’s mother in the first film), so it seems fitting she plays a kind of motherhood figure to Regan.

As Regan claims to remember nothing about her exorcism, Dr. Tuskin is trying “revolutionary” brain synchronisation biofeedback device. Dr. Lamont just so happens to be visiting for one of these experiences.

This is where you might notice the film doesn’t work very well.

You also get odd exchanges between characters, noticeably wherever Richard Burton’s priest goes.

Unfortunately, Burton was suffering considerable health problems at the time due to his chronic alcoholism. His marriage to Elizabeth Taylor had also collapsed and he was awaiting divorce proceedings.

He just doesn’t seem to be quite with it in many of the scenes.

After these opening establishing shots the film really loses all direction.

A lot of the time we get shots of Regan prancing around in quite revealing costumes, or some scenes that involve tap dancing for a school production she’s in, whilst also a side narrative of locust swarms in Africa.

Basically, as part of his “research”, Lamont is spirited back to the past to view Father Lankester Merrin (Max von Sydow) at work in Africa.

That’s thanks to the biofeedback machine again.

Which means lots of scenes of world-class actors sitting prone in seats thrashing about a bit, interspersed with dramatic scenes of locusts swarming, Regan wandering around in a trance, and all that jazz.

Everything seems to be cobbled together in no real narrative structure.

This was to the extent director John Boorman actually pulled the film from cinemas after its first release to do some more editing

The screenplay was written by William Goodhart, but Boorman didn’t like it. Goodhart refused to make any adjustments to the script, so the director had two other writers rework the thing whilst they were shooting the film.

This meant the ending of the film was unclear until the final section of the shoot.

What happens is anti-climactic. Lamont takes Regan to her former home in Georgetown (where the exorcism happened). Pazuzu rocks up and creates a second Regan to act as a temptation device.

Meanwhile, Dr. Tuskin (Fletcher) and Sharon Spencer (Winn) travel via plane to Georgetown fearing Regan is in danger.

They hail a taxi over to the house but some locusts attack and the taxi driver loses control and crashes into Regan’s house.

Dr. Tuskin is injured but able to extricate herself. Sharon Spencer does the same thing, but then has a bit of a funny turn.

Now, one of the few things we’d enjoyed about this film was staring at Kitty Winn and her mesmerising eyes. But Exorcist II went and ruined that as well, as her character Sharon (for an undisclosed reason) decides to set herself on fire.

Presumably due to demonic possession or whatever. But it’s so badly done it’s more comical than anything else.

After this (and we do feel sorry for Louise Fletcher) Dr. Tuskin is left floundering around uttering lines from the godawful script. Regan’s house then implodes and Pazuzu is returned to whatever dimension he came from.

The end!

But what a mess of a film. You need to watch it to realise how poorly structured it is and how over two hours it just doesn’t really do anything.

No, it isn’t the worst film of all time. Not even close. We suppose film buff anger and frustration with Exorcist II: The Heretic stems from their love for the first Exorcist.

The result is hyperbole and ire directed at the poor sequel. Including from William Friedkin, who hated the sequel and felt it undermined his original film.

A scan around online seems to provide two camps of people:

1. Those convinced it’s the worst thing ever.
2. Those who think it’s underrated and not that bad.

That’s led to some film fan reviews of 7/10 on IMDb. It most definitely is not worthy of that rating—we think a solid 4/10 is generous enough.

It’s not on the staggeringly incompetent level of so-bad-it’s-good films such as 1990’s Samurai Cop. But in this case if the film had taken itself less seriously it may have benefited the damned thing.

The Production of Exorcist II: The Heretic

The film had a budget of $11 million. Despite all the negative press and terrible word of mouth, it still managed to recoup $30.7 million at the box office.

As it was such a critical disaster, no further sequels were made until 1990. The Exorcist III totally ignores the events of this film.

Filming started from May 24th 1976 at Burbank Studios in California.

Linda Blair (still very young at the time) agreed to reprise the role that made her infamous. The first draft of the script convinced her as she thought it was great, but was then annoyed to see it mangled with updated drafts on a daily basis as the shoot began.

However, she also refused all makeup scenes as she hated the process of prosthetics. Which didn’t help anyone.

Richard Burton later said he took the role as a paycheck film, needing the money to fund his expensive divorce from Elizabeth Taylor.

His notoriously awful drinking problem became an issue later in the shoot.

Kitty Winn also returned from the first film and had her role importance bumped up a little (until she was unceremoniously killed off).

Winn has an interesting sidenote of a career in acting, staring in some major productions in the early ’70s. Along with The Exorcist she was in The Panic in Needle Park (1971) alongside Al Pacino.

However, she only starred in one more film after this (Mirrors in 1978), spending most of her career in theatre before retiring in 1983. She’s avoided the limelight ever since.

As for director Sir John Boorman, we do have sympathy for him.

He didn’t go out to ruin the sequel, it just went wrong for him. Spectacularly. However, the guy knows what he’s doing. He directed the excellent Deliverance (1972), but also did the bizarre Zardoz (1974). A hit and miss career, then.

But he’s been vilified for Exorcist II, which is a bit unfair.

Yes, it’s frustrating it’s such a shoddy film. But the guy tried something different. In 2005 he said:

“It all comes down to audience expectations. The film that I made, I saw as a kind of riposte to the ugliness and darkness of The Exorcist. I wanted a film about journeys that was positive, about good, essentially. And I think that audiences, in hindsight, were right. I denied them what they wanted and they were pissed off about it – quite rightly, I knew I wasn’t giving them what they wanted and it was a really foolish choice. The film itself, I think, is an interesting one – there’s some good work in it – but when they came to me with it I told John Calley, who was running Warner Bros. then, that I didn’t want it. ‘Look,’ I said, ‘I have daughters, I don’t want to make a film about torturing a child,’ which is how I saw the original film. But then I read a three-page treatment for a sequel written by a man named William Goodhart and I was really intrigued by it because it was about goodness. I saw it then as a chance to film a riposte to the first picture. But it had one of the most disastrous openings ever – there were riots! And we recut the actual prints in the theatres, about six a day, but it didn’t help of course and I couldn’t bear to talk about it, or look at it, for years.”

On the plus side, industry legend Martin Scorsese liked the film. He said:

“I like the first Exorcist, because of the Catholic guilt I have, and because it scared the hell out of me; but The Heretic surpasses it. Maybe Boorman failed to execute the material, but the movie still deserved better than it got.”

Unfortunately, not many people agree with him. It remains one of the most lamented films by critics worldwide, holds a 10% score on Rotten Tomatoes, and William Friedkin accused Boorman of having a “demented mind”.

Yeah, well… at least it earned a profit!