‘Evokes not terror but laughter.” “A movie for morons, a total cheesy rip-off that makes not one minute of coherent sense.” “The stupidest major movie ever made.” These were some of the milder responses from reviewers to Exorcist II: The Heretic, one of the most notorious disasters in Hollywood history, on its release in 1977. Its director, John Boorman, says he felt utterly humiliated and close to despair. “I considered my choices. The first was to commit suicide. The second was to defect to Russia,” the chastened director told one interviewer. He asked another if he could atone for his film by “immolating myself on Hollywood Boulevard”.
What was the problem? Audiences had, most likely, been looking for shock and horror, revolving heads and vomit, but Boorman gave them metaphysics and surrealism instead – and they weren’t standing for it. That’s why many jeered, laughed, hurled popcorn at the screen, and even – according to William Friedkin, director of the original Exorcist, who called the sequel a “horrible picture” – chased studio executives down the street. Viewers were nonplussed by a plot that had Linda Blair’s Regan, the traumatised girl from the first movie, now turned into an all-American tap dancing teenager. For some reason, she is undergoing a course of hypnotic therapy on a Bakelite “synchroniser” machine operated by a brusque, no-nonsense psychiatrist played by Louise Fletcher (Nurse Ratched from One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest).
