Now here is a fascinating clusterfuck. The Exorcist III, written and directed by William Peter Blatty (the author who wrote the novels on which this and the original The Exorcist are based) is an extremely strange, often surprising film, one worth seeing even if it isn’t ultimately a success. George C. Scott stars as a detective investigating a series of brutal ritualistic homicides somehow connected to a dead serial killer and the original film’s exorcism. If that sounds like a stretch, it is, but it’s nothing compared to what this sequel has in store.
The film begins with a series of talky scenes emphasizing Scott’s jocular relationship with a local priest. For a horror franchise, these are mature, grounded characters, and Blatty goes out of his way to make the opening a complete reversal from the mindless desperation of most horror sequels. There are even bubbling undercurrents of deeper issues, particularly race relations.
But this reserved start makes it all the more jarring when things takes a turn for the outrageous. Starting with a dream sequence in which Fabio (!) and Patrick Ewing (!!) make cameos in an afterworld purgatory, Exorcist III starts revealing surrealistic, unexpected traits. Blatty (who did have one prior feature) is a hit-or-miss director: he stages some sequences quite well (there is one infamously scary scene set during a nurse’s hospital night shift), but others are embarrassingly amateurish, and all of the supporting actors come across horribly. The aforementioned scenes between Scott and the priest revolve around ornate, florid dialogue that works better in prose than it does on screen.
As The Exorcist III churns towards its outlandish finish, it suffers from that same desperation it so steadfastly avoided at first. Shock attempts, like shots of possessed old ladies crawling across the ceiling, are not the movie’s strong suit. These are scattershot attempts by Blatty (or, more likely, the studio) to match the original’s graphic excesses, and they grow increasingly silly (although never boring).
Yet the film’s ambition, affection for its characters, and unsettling atmosphere keep the audience engaged until the last act. And boy, do they fuck up that last act. The finale, apparently forced upon Blatty by the studio to make the film truer to the franchise, is a wonderful disaster, an insane clusterfuck of nonsensical plot pivots and ludicrous religious mumbo jumbo. It’s actually a fitting end for such a unique movie: Blatty wanted The Exorcist III to be something different, and when the studio forced it to conform, it does so in the most ass-backwards, lunatic way possible. There’s something authentically weird and inexplicably cool at the demonic heart of this one.
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