Exorcist 2: The Heretic (1977)

Even if you don’t like “The Exorcist” you have to admit that it has made a major impact in the world of horror and has influenced many films, actors, directors, and fans since it came out. So the idea that a sequel so horrible, so ill conceived, so insulting as “The Exorcist 2: The Heretic” is hard to imagine. And yet there it is, a steaming pile of crap that even the actors and director wish never happened. What started off as a project to essentially recreate the original film (why?) turned out to be a complete mess that was rewritten more times than a script should ever be touched and yet was still being rewritten and adjusted as the actual filming occurred, so by the time the filming was finished, the story was nothing like the one that the actors had agreed to help make and star in. Some people want to place all of the blame on director John Boorman but I don't want; he has gone on to make some wonderful films and had some classics before taking on this doomed project

Besides the constant shifting of events and story ideas, the concept that the demon that possessed Regan from the original was just a bunch of evil locusts and that Regan was some powerful healing psychic is just laughable. Indeed, William Peter Blatty, the author of the original “Exorcist” novel laughed out loud, a lot, during the first public screening of this film. This is  a great example of yet again it’s often a great idea to never explain the EVIL!

I found this film very difficult to watch because of these factors as well as the fact that this movie’s visuals are SOOO 70’s! Form the fashions, the decorum of the rooms, to all of the browns and oranges, and of course the terrible film quality made this movie too much of an effort to watch, much less to find anything enjoyable within it.