Ask JKM a Question: The Exorcist TV Series?

A reader named Chuck writes:

"I don’t know if you remember, but my very first “Ask JKM” question submitted back in 2011 (or maybe 2012?) about one of my favorite films of all time, The Exorcist III (1990). 

Well, I could not help but wonder if you have been watching the new Exorcist series on Fox, and what you think of it. I have to admit, in my humble opinion, I think this show was very well done. 

And—while I have not been able to confirm this—I believe that was Brad Dourif’s voice I heard portraying one of the demons in an early episode (talking to Father Marcus).

 Unfortunately, I don’t think the ratings have been high enough to earn it a second season so this show may be gone too soon. But with only two episodes left, I thought now was as good a time as any to ask you about it. I should also give you the obligatory warning to avoid spoilers, if you have not already (because they are all over the internet at this point).

Chuck, thank you for posing the question. And, absolutely, I remember your great questions here.

At this point, I have binge-watched the first eight episodes of the Fox TV series, and to my surprise, I’ve (mostly) enjoyed it. It's a good show. 

The Exorcist is a first-rate production, with excellent location shooting (in Chicago) and some remarkable performances supporting the narrative.

For those who haven’t yet watched the TV series, it concerns two priests -- Father Marcus (Ben Daniels) and Father Tomas (Alfonso Herreira) -- who attempt to help the Rance family in a crisis. 

In particular, one Rance daughter, Casey (Hanna Kasulka) appears to be possessed by a demon. Her mother (Geena Davis) and father (Alan Ruck) turn to men of the cloth to save her.

The first few episodes of The Exorcist, in particular, are stellar. I have been particularly impressed by Daniels, Herreira, Kurt Egyiawan (Brother Bennett) and Kirsten Fitzgerald (Maria Walters).  They have, in a short time, developed fascinating, multi-faceted characters.

The Rance family, alas, I have found not quite as compelling. 

Geena Davis seems to be sleepwalking through her role as the matriarch of the imperiled Rance family. There are reasons for Angela’s apparent emotional disconnection, but I’m not entirely certain that the performance works, even in light of that fact.

Also, I am a little disappointed with the turn the last few episodes have taken. There is a huge twist -- which I won’t spoil here -- about mid-way through this batch of episodes that harks directly back to the Friedkin 1973 film.

I feel that connection is wholly unnecessary, and actually distracting. 

The first few episodes do a strong, sturdy job of setting up a new story in The Exorcist universe.  I see no motivating reason for the writers to make a connection between the original film and their new story.  

In truth, I find the revelations of the connection little gimmicky.  For one thing, it all turns out to be a mundane “revenge” plot, and I simply refuse to believe that carrying a “40 year grudge” would be a demonic mode of operation or even interest.

For one thing, demons certainly reckon time differently than we do. Forty years could be the blink of an eye for such a being.  For another, “revenge” is a human motive, and therefore understandable and not very scary. As soon as demonic attack has a human motive, fear and uncertainty dwindles.

Additionally, the recreation of certain events from the time period of the Friedkin movie only succeeds in inviting unnecessary and invidious comparisons.

Some other points: 

The exorcisms on the series generally fall flat. Basically, exorcisms are men yelling at a demon, telling it to leave a host body.  The demon usually eventually does so, but it isn’t always clear what words or recitations succeed in sending it away. 

And it isn’t always clear, either, why sometimes these words work, and sometimes they don’t. 

Nor is it apparent, visually, if the demon is actually gone, or just in hiding at the finale of an exorcism.  Consider the exorcism in episode eight of the series.  We are led to believe it works, of course.

Very few movies, beyond Friedkin’s manage to make the rite of exorcism compelling or relatable, or consistent.

Another observation: in stretching The Exorcist universe, the TV series crosses rather overtly into Rosemary’s Baby (1968) and The Omen (1976) territory; featuring a cabal of Satanists on Earth attempting to bring forth demons and devils in the flesh. 

I’m not stating that this plot line is bad, only that it is a new development for The Exorcist saga.  I found the "conspiracy" angle fascinating, and deeply disturbing. The Maria Walters character is a frightening zealot. 

Finally, I want to write that I absolutely admire the way the series depicts the demon (Robert Emmett Lunney). We see him, often, as a balding old man in a suit.  He will appear behind Casey at times of stress, and make contact with her by putting a hand on her shoulder, or kissing her.  The character is called “Salesman” according to IMDB, and that’s a perfect designation.  

There’s a strange menace about a demon visualized in this fashion, as a seemingly ordinary, but oddly slippery person.

I’ll finish out the rest of the season of the series with interest, but now that I know the demon’s very human end game, some of the fun of The Exorcist is gone for me. I think it could have been a great series, given the first few episodes, but instead it has settled out to be merely good. I do hope very much it returns for a second season. 

Don’t forget to ask me questions at Muirbusiness@yahoo.com

At Anorak: The Devil Made Them Do It - The Five Best Exorcist Knock-Offs

My new article at Anorak is now up. It gazes at the Exorcist (1973) craze of the mid-1970s, and five films that exploited it to strong effect.

Here's a snippet:

WILLIAM Friedkin’s The Exorcist — based on the best-selling novel by William Peter Blatty — quickly became one of the first genre blockbusters of the seventies, and a generational touchstone to boot.

The Exorcist also represented a new brand of horror film, in a sense, because it lacked a familiar “monster” like Dracula, the Wolf Man or The Frankenstein Monster, and it didn’t depend on well-known genre personalities, like Vincent Price, Christopher Lee, or Peter Cushing, either.

Accordingly, lines stretched around the block for showings of the horror film on the East and West coasts in America, and everyone seemed to have a very strong opinion about the controversial film, pro or con.

The Reverend Billy Graham, for instance reported that traumatized Exorcist viewers were experiencing “nightmares and problems they never had before.”

Graham’s publicly-expressed fear was that there would be even more psychological damage to Americans if people continued to “flock to the box office” to see The Exorcist.

But while such self-appointed protectors of morality wrung their hands over Friedkin’s masterpiece and its public acceptance, Hollywood filmmakers realized that a large audience was now primed for much more of The Exorcist’s brand of terror.

Specifically, this brand of horror consisted of “normal” Americans unexpectedly encountering the supernatural and/or paranormal, and in the process facing questions of the after-life, and the existence of God…or the Devil.

In the span of a few short years, movie audiences were treated to Exorcist imitations such as Abby (1974), Beyond the Door (1975), The Devil’s Rain (1975), Race with the Devil(1975), The Reincarnation of Peter Proud (1975), The Haunting of Julia (1976), Ruby(1977), and The Legacy (1979).

Below is a list of five of the best such Exorcist knock-offs, in chronological order.  These inventive, well-made films — while no doubt inspired by The Exorcist — also expertly established their own unique  and terrifying artistic identities...

40 Years Ago Today: The Exorcist (1973)

Forty years ago today, The Exorcist (1973) was released in United States theaters, and in many senses, the age of the modern horror film truly began.  

At the time, William Friedkin's film met with tremendous controversy, instead of the universal acclaim some people associate with it today. 

The Nation's Robert Hatch called it an "exceedingly well-made bad picture" and noted that The Exorcist "denigrates medicine and psychiatry, it involves the Catholic Church in mumbo-jumbo and, by grotesque make-up and camera trickery...it turns a 12 year old girl into a spectacle of loathsome ugliness for the sole purpose of mindless entertainment.  It should be scorned." (February 2, 1974, page 157).

Jay Cocks at Time Magazine called The Exorcist "vile and brutalizing," and Film Quarterly termed it "the trash bombshell of 1973, the aesthetic equivalent of being run over by a truck...a gloating, ugly, exploitation picture..."

The Reverend Billy Graham went even further, and accused The Exorcist of causing depression and spiritual angst in 1970s movie audiences.  

He said: "A psychiatrist friend of mine has told me that he is seeing new patients all the time whose troubles can be directly traced to their having seen this film.  They report recurring nightmares and problems they never had before.  My friend is concerned, as I am, that there will be more of it, if people continue to flock to the box office."

Other critics were more approving.  Stanley Kauffmann at The New Republic called it the "most scary" picture he had seen in years and declared that "The Exorcist will scare the hell out of you."

Similarly, Films in Review noted that "the horror film will never be the same," while Roger Ebert called it "one of the best movie of its type ever made; it not only transcends the genre of terror, horror and the supernatural, but it transcends such serious, ambitious efforts in the same direction as Roman Polanski's Rosemary's Baby."

I agree with the critics who detect the artistry in William Friedkin's film.  

As I've written many times before, I credit the early parts of the film (the scenes set in Iraq, and later in a Georgetown Hospital) for rendering the special-effects-driven last act so damned effective, and so damned scary.  

Friedkin directs these early sequences as if they are a documentary -- like a cinema-verite travelogue -- and the result is a grounded, gritty sense of reality that completely captures the senses and absorbs attention.  These first two acts are so believably vetted that the third act -- even with the spinning head and split-pea vomit -- still plays, somehow, as realistic.

Novelist William Peter Blatty based his tale of demonic possession on a real-life story he had heard at George Washington University in 1949, but developed it so that it would become the terrifying story of a mother losing a child, and of a child corrupted.   The film isn't exploitative (particularly of Blair), because the point is indeed, childhood destroyed, ravaged by evil.  When our children are threatened in movies, all our futures or tomorrows are imperiled.

Also, I often consider The Exorcist a deliberate meditation about the structure of the universe.  Is there such a thing as the Devil, or is what we perceive as the devil really just a mental illness?  

The film’s first act suggests one answer, based in the knowledge of antiquity.  

The second act, set in the hospital (replete with painful-looking spinal tap) suggests the latter.  And then the third act goes nuts with violence and graphic effects, but also examples of human heroism and nobility.  The film thus provides two answers about life and the cosmos.  The first is that if there is a Devil there must, by implication, be a God too.  

And secondly, that acts of human courage and kindness can, finally, beat the Devil.  

The Exorcist may be brutal, but it is not vile.  On the contrary, it suggests that where evil exists, good exists too.  And that, finally, mankind can make a difference about which force succeeds.

Late Night Blogging: The Exorcist Movie Trailers

Ask JKM a Question: Do You Dare Walk These Steps Again? (Exorcist III)

A reader named Chuck writes:

“First, I am a huge fan of your blog (as I write while reading it instead of doing work at my desk). Second, I realize that the answer to my question my already exist in your book Horror Films of the 1990s, which I confess I do not own (though 1970s sits prominently on my shelf).

But, anyway, here goes: I was having a conversation with a friend in my LCS, and I told him that, in my opinion, The Exorcist III was one of the best, scariest, movies no one ever talks about. This immediately led down the road to “no, The Exorcist was too good to ever need a sequel in the first place” or “Exorcist 2 was horrible, and the prequels were bad too”, etc., etc.

I am interested to know what your feelings were/are regarding William Peter Blatty’s The Exorcist III (which was based on his book “Legion” I believe).

But more importantly, I am just curious as to why no one seems to have caught-up to how good it was (in my opinion—I realize you may disagree) so many years later. Was it too long? Was it that the previous sequel was just so bad? Or was it because it was so different from the original film, people just don’t know what to make of it?

To me, you just have to completely divorce yourself from the word “Exorcist” in the title, and look at it as a distinct, original film. The Exorcist is really just back-story here. I always loved how the really scary elements were never actually shown on-screen. Instead, you were more-or-less forced to imagine them in your own mind (although the old lady crawling on the ceiling still makes me uneasy). Plus, the acting quality is obvious. That initial dialogue scene where Detective Kinderman (George C. Scott) “meets” The Gemini Killer (Brad Dourif) in Cell 11, was something marvelous. In fact, I would love to hear your thoughts on that scene in particular.”

Chuck, this is a great question and a timely one indeed, since only recently I read (on The Huffington Post, I believe), commentary from William Friedkin -- a director I deeply admire -- diminishing the Exorcist follow-ups, including Exorcist III.

I do review Exorcist III (1990) in Horror Films of the 1990s, and it probably won’t surprise you to learn that I agree with your contention that it is a superb horror film, and, in fact, a worthy follow-up to The Exorcist (1973).

I write in Horror Films of the 1990s the following about the film:

“Deliberately eschewing flash and hipness, this modest sequel embodies the age-old cinema virtues of seriousness, good performances and spooky atmospherics. When considered together, the elements forge an overriding sense of doom and gloom, of autumn fast approaching, of judgment day on the horizon.

Close-ups of flickering lights, a clock that stops suddenly, and disturbing Christian iconography may not sound like the ingredients of a successful 1990s horror film, and yet such touches contribute mightily to Exorcist III’s aesthetic gravitas, aptly voiced in the film’s exhortation that “the whole world is a homicide victim.”

Indeed, Exorcist III obsesses on an old, aged world, one cracking and tearing at the seams because, once more to quote the intelligent dialogue, “everything’s relative” and there appears to be a worrisome numbing of the globe’s “moral sense.”  As evidence for this assertion, we see the Devil (or at least his minions) seep effortlessly into the ruined bodies of the old and infirm at a grand, gothic Georgetown Hospital…”

I also point out in the same review that the line of dialogue “It’s very late” is repeated in the film twice, and that it seems to be the core idea of the movie: there’s nothing new left on Earth but atrocity and more atrocity, and accordingly, all the characters are grappling with ghosts; ghosts of the past; ghosts of friends, and the ghost, of course, of the Gemini Killer.

For me, Exorcist III works for the very reasons I enumerate there.

It’s as if Kinderman (Scott) and the world itself are exhausted -- even crushed -- by the horrors they witness on a seemingly routine basis.  That exhaustion is spiritual, but also reflected in many characters’ physicality. Scott looks old and drained and tired, as do other performers.  The idea here is that those who have lived a long life in this “rotten” world grow so weak and vulnerable that the Devil uses their doubt…and slips inside them.  It’s a great idea for a horror movie, and an intriguing reflection of the “child possessed” that we see in the original Exorcist.   Here, it’s not someone representing tomorrow who suffers, but someone who has lived through all our (difficult) yesterdays.

The specific scene you discuss -- a lengthy back-and-forth between Kinderman and the Gemini Killer --rewards patience and attention, and works on at least two levels.  The first level is a policeman/suspect interview, of course.  The second level is a spiritual one, involving a mortal and an immortal, a demon, hashing things out.  The performances are strong, as you would expect from Dourif and Scott, but what few critics have mentioned is that this very scene in essence paves the way for many similar sequences in horror films and TV programs throughout the 1990s. 

The lengthy sit-down interview between a law enforcement professional and serial killer who seems more-than (and less-than) human is a dramatic, narrative device that later dominated The Silence of the Lambs (1991), and even one of my all-time favorite shows, Millennium (1996 – 1999).  Sure, there are antecedents other than Exorcist III -- like Michael Mann’s Manhunter in the late 1980s -- but the exact dynamic of serial-killer-possible-demon-in-wait seems to emerge from this particular film.

Why didn’t Exorcist III find more critical acceptance then, in 1990?  And why hasn’t it now?

Back in the 1990s, the old critical guard was still in control of mainstream media, and by-and-large this group treated every sequel as a meritless cash-grab.  The same critics also treated virtually every horror film as “beneath contempt.”

Today, I suspect we’ve gone too far in the other direction, with Internet-based critics bending over to welcome every fan-boy sequel without thought or reflection as to its artistic merit or social value. 

But Exorcist III fit into the pre-existing narrative of “sequels = bad; horror film sequels = worse” and paid the price.  The fact that Boorman’s The Heretic (1977) was also poorly received made the narrative even more appealing, especially to stressed-out reviewers on a deadline.

I also suspect that a core group of horror fans were also disappointed that this sequel didn’t follow in line with more Exorcist-style head spinning and pea soup vomit.  Still, the jolts in Exorcist III are considerable. You mention the old lady on the ceiling, but there’s also that brilliant jump scare involving a distant, cloaked figure emerging suddenly from a patient room to claim a victim.  These jolts, however, are not exactly graphic or gory in nature.  I suspect a certain contingent of Exorcist fans wanted buckets of puke and other nasty manifestations of Old Scratch rather than a quiet, intelligent film about the nature of evil. 

I feel that Exorcist III is more appreciated today than it was on release, but all films possess an historical context that surrounds them like a bubble.  Only few films escape the shape and form of that bubble, or see a re-consideration, after the fact, of their reputation. John Carpenter’s The Thing (1982) is one such film, but so far, Exorcist III hasn’t been hauled out and re-examined as fully.  Writing Horror Films of the 1990s, I also learned that some hardcore horror fans hate the era 1990 – 1999 in film history, and don’t revisit it as frequently as the 1970s or 1980s…or even the 2000s.

Yet I would argue that The Exorcist and Exorcist III actually work rather well in tandem.  By my estimation, The Exorcist works so well because of Friedkin’s documentary-style approach.  The travel sequences in Iraq and the (terrifying…) visit to a metropolitan hospital in 1970s New York enhance the picture’s reality, which comes in handy for the final act, with its levitating beds and other pyrotechnics.

Exorcist III, in a different way, feels like a lengthy philosophical debate about man and mortality.  To some extent, The Exorcist is a visceral experience as a realistic, near-documentary/travelogue, and Exorcist III is a cerebral one, contextualizing the earlier events and shading their meaning more deeply and thoroughly.

I admire both films, to tell you the truth, though for different reasons.

Don’t forget to ask me your questions at Muirbusiness@yahoo.com