For Exorcist II, the road to Hell–and cult glory–was paved with good intentions
“Regret’s a bad word.”
Late in David Kittredge’s Boorman and the Devil, Oscar nominee Linda Blair looks back on the ill-fated production of Exorcist II: The Heretic with a melancholy fondness shared by much of the film’s surviving cast and crew. Opening in the shadow of Star Wars in Summer 1977, what began as John Boorman’s earnest exploration of science and faith had endured a wildly delayed and budget-ballooning production only to be welcomed by decades of critical and cultural flagellation. Once cursed to live on as a failed pop-culture footnote, Kittredge’s astonishingly exhaustive documentary makes a compelling case for redeeming Exorcist II–not just for the imaginative, often bizarre film it still is, but for the tantalizing glimpses of the film it could have been, ones still lingering like ghosts in the memories of its creators.
Every meticulously-researched minute of Boorman and the Devil feels alive. Kittredge crosscuts William Fraker’s spared-no-expense Exorcist II cinematography with incredible access to unearthed archival footage, news clips, and production ephemera–vivified by playfully sassy storyboard animations and dizzying whip pans that blow shooting schedules and script notes right off the page. Rarely does an image sit still, giving the making of Boorman’s The Heretic all the fuck-you-energy of, say, Boogie Nights’ scrappy productions or Ocean’s Eleven’s elaborate heists. The addictively panicked, exhilarating verve granted to these dusty documents and deliberately “unfinished” faux-archival mirrors Boorman and his crew’s scramble to revise (and compromise) artistic ambitions that seemed doomed by both inevitable and unpredictable curveballs even before production began.
A journeyman director riding high off the financial success of Deliverance, Boorman wasn’t the biggest fan of William Friedkin’s horror smash–but respected its power as a “brilliantly manipulative movie.” While audiences may have been enticed by the seemingly sacrilegious shock of Friedkin’s film, Boorman believed The Heretic could push horror into what he saw as an equally compelling direction of more abstract, psychologically unsettling realms–and convinced many (but not all) of The Exorcist’s original cast to adopt his stance.
Kittredge fittingly revels in the situational minutiae that built this avalanche of logistical, emotional, and expectational hurdles for the Heretic team. From Day One, the production stalls for costly hours over inter-departmental squabbles about whether the film’s psycho-synthesizer counts as a prop or a light; other detours include the near-death dance of how long you can keep an actress set on fire, and the monotonous day-to-day of an entomologist hired to babysit a locust swarm–and keep it from laying waste to Los Angeles. There are glimmers of success throughout, like a pioneering early Steadicam that would go on to inspire Kubrick’s usage for The Shining, and the composition of Ennio Morricone’s still criminally-underrated score. However, Boorman and the Devil’s comedically palpable dread comes from watching each small victory pale against life-threatening illnesses, combative egos, and the cripplingly indifferent march of a dwindling shooting schedule and studio balance sheet.
Boorman and the Devil begins as an earnest deep dive into what went wrong with what once seemed like a sure thing, but what makes it so magnetic is how attuned Kittredge is to the horrors of expectation. Fighting to match the weight of a cultural juggernaut like the first Exorcist is terrifying enough; from birth, this film had to define itself against its predecessor while still trying to be its own thing. Yet the testimonies of Boorman and his crew, both in the thick of it and decades removed, reveal a central creative ethos that, for all its outré flourishes, feels too fascinating not to see through to fruition. It’s a double-edged sword, as that tension breeds a pervasive mix of self-doubt and overconfidence. As everyone with creative or financial skin in the game tries to steer things their way, the dizzying array of Kittredge’s conflicting firsthand accounts underscores a biting truth: the best collaborative efforts are at the mercy of individual egos. Between Boorman, Richard Burton, and co-writer-turned-“creative associate” Rospo Pallenberg alone, this film never had a prayer. Yet the cast and crew’s collective dedication remains unflappable in the face of endlessly-revised and condensed scenes–especially the film’s ending, which once flirted with a concept simply called “THE VOID.” While some tease the idea that this film, like Friedkin’s original, harbored some sort of curse, Kittredge lays bare how the only Devil of this film is in the small details that could only add up to, well, Exorcist II: The Heretic. Those clashes against time, money, and ego produced bizarre storytelling and visual choices born as much of pure survival as of a fading hope for overall coherence — but Kittredge champions Boorman and company’s resourceful adaptiveness amid the chaos, something we can’t help but celebrate even when we’re baffled by the end result.
These insights take on even deeper potency once we arrive at Exorcist II’s disastrous reception, as Kittredge’s film pivots from what a cast and crew endures to create great art to what happens when that art is met with the gutting possibility that it all amounted to nothing but critical mockery and financial ruin. Hell, this film’s failure, coupled with flops like Heaven’s Gate, helped inspire legislation that transformed how movies are financed and exhibited. But Boorman is seemingly impervious to criticism by beating his critics to the self-deprecating punch. He’s relentlessly candid about Exorcist II’s compromised nature and reception without letting those aspects compromise the joy of having created at all. It’s not something Boorman and the Devil turns into a Pollyanna-tinged statement–the shoot nearly killed Boorman, and the studio’s refusal to let a newer cut see release left him wryly joking about self-immolation. Yet Boorman, his cast and crew, and even Exorcist II itself forge on; time, once a bitter enemy, seems to forgive and heal most wounds, as tarnished reputations give way to critical and personal reappraisal.
What makes Boorman and the Devil so damn special is how it borrows documentary tactics usually reserved for canonizing beloved classics–and turns them instead toward an autopsy and a resurrection of a film most wouldn’t think deserves either. It finds bitingly vital lessons in failure, whether the subjective kind found in art or the black-and-white kind found in cratering box office returns. Even more so, it finds unrestrained hope–or faith–in an artist’s ability to toss such grueling fates aside, celebrate the act of creating at all, and blaze onward to the next dream.
Boorman and the Devil hits theaters on August 28th courtesy of Yellow Veil Pictures.
