“It was horrible. Utterly horrible. And fascinating.”
So says Richard Burton as Roman Catholic priest, Father Philip Lamont, in Exorcist II: The Heretic.
He could have been describing the film, a sequel that squealed like a pig.
Yet the story of its making is not horrible and utterly fascinating.
BOORMAN AND THE DEVIL is a diabolically good documentary on John Boorman’s folly that fell foul of audiences that had flocked to William Friedkin’s huge hit, The Exorcist, four years before.
Friedkin had no feelings for a follow up but Warner Brothers felt compelled by the power of the box office to entice to resurrect Regan’s plight and pitched it to Boorman. Ironically, he had been offered to helm the original film but refused on the grounds he found the story repulsive. This from the man who had Ned Beatty squealing like a pig in his previous film, Deliverance. Beatty must have enjoyed the experience because he signed up for The Heretic!
So what possessed Boorman to confront his demons? The screenplay by William Goodhart presented as a metaphysical thriller. This from the guy who flipped The Wizard of Oz into a Sean Connery man-kini clad commodity.
David Kittredge’s hugely entertaining and informative film shows the devil in the detail, the plague proportion perils that beset the production like the miscasting of the serially sozzled Burton, the technical disasters, the locust wrangling and the dust storm simulations, the loose occupational and safety standards, the illnesses, the death of Lee J Cobb and the necessity to write Kinderman out of the scenario and the on the run rewrites by the strange Rospo Pallenberg who somehow had the ear of Boorman.
Boorman is interviewed and gives point blank answers as do Linda Blair, Louise Fletcher, Rospo Pallenberg, all with fascinating stories and insights. Mike Flanagan, himself helming the next film in the franchise, is interviewed with some pertinent observations and considerations.
BOORMAN AND THE DEVIL is quite a mesmerising film, a head spinning study in studio politics, of hubris and ambition, of the madness of movie making; a fabulous phoenix rising from a film flop, a famed failure that the film industry would care to forget that almost killed the director and his career.
BOORMAN AND THE DEVIL is one of the undisputed highlights of MONSTER FEST which begins October 2 at Cinema Nova Melbourne and runs over the Halloween weekend at Event Cinemas, George Street, Sydney. https://www.monsterfest.com.au/
