31 Days of Cheese: Day 28 - The Exorcist Two

Oh my, what a mess. What an utter mess of a film. I mean how do you take the most successful Horror film of the era and mess it up this badly.

Well for one you have John Boorman, fresh off his epic disaster Zardoz direct.

Then add an obviously blotto Richard Burton, dress James Earl Jones up in a grasshopper suit and have a lot of scenes with blinking lights in people’s faces and behold! An utter mess from 1977 that ended up finishing second to Plan Nine From Outer Space in voting for the 1980 Golden Turkey Awards worst movie ever made (by only a few votes if memory serves).

Anyway the setting is that it’s a few years after the first film. Linda Blair, Regan has grown up a bit and is in New York. her mother – (the actor didn’t want to do the sequel) is away on location somewhere so she is being care for by Nurse Ratchet (well Louise Fletcher who needed to pay the bulls I guess) who is some kind of doctor for kids and some other woman who acts creepy and weird before she sets herself on fire at the end of the film (an idea that came to me once or twice while watching this mess).

Anyway enter Father Lamont (Richard Burton) who seems to be looking for scotch but actually is investigating Regan’s exorcism. There is some nonsense early on about feuding inside the Church but it’s very quickly dropped and we shall drop it too. Meantime Nurse Ratchet (I’m going to call her that, it’s fun) has invented or is using this machine where two people stare at blinking lights and synch their minds while hypnotized. It’s a massively stupid idea.

Really, watching lights flash on and off on the faces of Richard Burton and Linda Blair does not gripping cinema make.

And then as if the drugs have kicked in the film wanders over this rather pointless story about Kokumo who has power to calm locusts or something that the demon Pazuzu doesn’t like so it possesses him as it would Linda later on.

We then see the Father from the first film as young man climb up some cliff to church in Africa (several folks fall to their death as they climb the cliffs. Would it have killed them to set up a rope ladder? ) and he rids Kokumo of the demon.

Lamont convinced that the demon is still inside Linda somewhere goes to Africa where he meets James Earl Jones dressed as a locust. He then turns into a scientist who is an expert on locusts (and can I say that insects, even lots of them do not gripping cinema make either?). And the viewer’s brain turns to mush.

There is a final confrontation back in Georgetown where Linda is split into the good Linda and the bad Linda the bad Linda is supposed to kind of a hottie. It’s not well right, there really is an icky quality to it and there is an uncomfortable moment were Lamont starts snogging with the bad Linda. But then the room is full of bugs and explosions and Lamont rips the heart out of the bad Linda and the good Linda calms the bugs and I die inside a bit.

Then Nurse Ratchet realizes that only Father Lamont can protect Linda and as they walk away the house bursts into flames.

I’ve read that at the premier of the film people were throwing things at the screen as the film ended. I’m not surprised. I was throwing things at my own TV.

Enjoy with a cheese sandwich and a lot of scotch. I understand you can get grasshoppers as a food but really.