The Exorcist III
This week the From Below Microcinema presents part 3 of Sequel August: *The Exorcist III *(1990) on Tuesday, August 13th, at 8pm. NOTE the earlier day of the week for this screening!
Here is the link to reserve a seat. Doors will be at 7:50 and we’re starting the movie at 8:10!
In our month-long exploration of sequels, follow-ups, and franchises, we’ve looked at movies that are seemingly impossible continuations of what came before (Psycho 2) and movies that provide a delightful inversions of their predecessors (Pumping Iron II: The Women), and now we turn to a movie that is a refutation and course correction to what has come before: The Exorcist III.
Let’s set the scene: The Exorcist. Big movie, right? Written by William Peter Blatty, directed by William Friedkin, with that incredible & iconic performance by Linda Blair. Very popular! So of course the studios demand a sequel, and they get one: The Exorcist II: The Heretic, which is a fairly straightforward sequel with Regan MacNeil back, having more freaky stuff happen to her. Your humble curators have yet to see it, so we cannot issue judgement, but it seems like the reception of that film goes… poorly.
Meanwhile, Blatty, a devout Catholic, cannot help but return to his most successful interrogation of those concepts (side note: *The Exorcist *is maybe the most impact a film has had on a religious institution, bringing the niche concept of exorcisms and demonic possession to newfound levels of real-world implementation within Catholic parishes, at least until Passion of the Christ finds its ways into evangelic suburbia). Not only does he claim his directorial debut The Ninth Configuration as an ersatz tangential sequel to The Exorcist, but he works on a script for another follow up, titled Legion, which returns to the character of Lt. Kinderman from the original film. Friedkin is set to direct again, but the film enters into a state of purgatory when the two Williams have significant disagreements about the direction of the film.
To make a long story short: Blatty turns the script into a book, which becomes a bestseller, which then Blatty turns back into a script, which then becomes a tumultous production process in which Blatty comes into conflict with basically every producer over the film (namely, the lack of exorcisms in it), which then gets cut apart by the studios, which eventually is released not as *Legion * but as *The Exorcist III. *Audiences are greeted by a thoughtful, warm, and labyrinthine exploration of religion as mediated through George C. Scott investigating Zodiac-like murders by a serial killer that has been dead for several years. While they may not have taken too kindly to that, time has been kind to The Exorcist III, and we believe that it will be another rousing addition to SEQUEL AUGUST.