The Exorcist Legacy by Nat Segaloff

Author:Nat Segaloff
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Citadel Press
Published: 2023-06-05T00:00:00+00:00

SANDRA: “What’s the matter with you?’”

REGAN: “I was possessed by a demon. Oh, it’s OK.

He’s gone.”

Before the first weekend was over, the studio was telling exhibitors that they would be sending them a new edit.41 Boorman at first suggested the cuts by phone from Ireland but then returned to Los Angeles for hands-on work.42 At first he resisted, but when Warner Bros. showed him the damage that had been done to the Bruin Theatre in Westwood Village, Los Angeles, by rioting UCLA students, he changed his mind and watched his film with an audience. Whatever they laughed at, he cut. Some of the excised footage made it into the final version eventually released on home video, some did not. Among the revisions was a prologue explaining how Father Lamont (Richard Burton) had been shaken by the botched exorcism in South America; more dialogue between Cardinal Jaros (Paul Henreid) and Lamont about Merrin suddenly falling into disgrace; and the victim of an auto accident asking Dr. Tuskin for help. Bizarre scenes of Linda Blair rehearsing a school tap dance number were cut, as was a scene in which Lamont rebukes a bus driver for taking a dinner break. A three-minute shorter version was announced for American bookings after the June 17 opening.43

They say that nobody sets out to make a bad film, but what were they thinking?

“The nature of evil is investigated in the film,” Boorman says, “but the notion is that goodness competes with evil and, in the context of the film, helps to drive it out, and I think this is perhaps why the film was rejected by so many people because they went to see it hoping to see more of the same and were frustrated to discover the film was not about evil, it was about goodness. In many ways it was a disaster and it took a long time before the film could be understood for its own sake rather than as a sequel to The Exorcist. And it certainly was a very painful experience for me because I felt that I had put a lot of very good work into this film and had something important to say, yet it was rejected by audiences.”44

Admittedly, Boorman is an acquired taste. In his first feature, Point Blank (1967), he turned the revenge genre inside-out by making a violent art film that has withstood the test of time (and a 1999 remake, Payback). His 1972 Deliverance, whose unexpected success no doubt endeared him to Warner Bros., is a hallmark of intelligent tension and exquisite violence. Hope and Glory (1987), his nostalgic piece about World War II, is perhaps his most accessible film, and The General (1998) is an uncompromising character study of a gangster. But he can be wildly inconsistent; despite its cult following, his 1981 Excalibur is a near-incoherent retelling of the Arthurian legend; his 1974 post-apocalyptic science fiction feature Zardoz is a stylistic and dramatic mess; The Emerald Forest (1985) is an idea looking for a plot; and then there’s The Heretic.

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