Review

It's 1990 and an ill wind is blowing down the steps Father Damien Karras died at the bottom of fifteen years previously. Queue Mike Oldfield's "Tubular Bells", this is a sequel to The Exorcist after all. Also shaking off this mortal coil fifteen years ago was the Gemini Killer, a psychopath that murdered random victims with names starting with the letter K. Only problem being in the present another serial killer is active and his m.o exactly matches that of the Gemini Killer, an m.o that was not fully released to the public. Investigating the new crop of murders is Lt. Kinderman, who along with Father Dyer is still coming to terms with Damien Karras's death.

Dyer is hospitalised and Kinderman continues his investigations. Unfortunately for Kinderman Dyer becomes the latest victim of the serial killer and the evidence points to someone in the hospital being responsible. Kinderman has the hospital locked down and the Police start to work their way through the staff and patients eventually discovering Patient X, who presents something of an enigma to Kinderman. Are we dealing with a copy cat killer or is the demon Pazuzu back to his old tricks.

After the second Exorcist movie the general public would have been safe in the knowledge that there wouldn't likely be a third movie given how much of a fiasco Boorman's effort turned out to be. Morgan Creek, who had the rights at this stage, were not about to give up on what could still be a lucrative franchise and noted that Blatty had published a sequel to his blockbuster novel The Exorcist. One thing lead to another and Blatty was called in to make a movie from his novel Legion; the only proviso being that "exorcism" should raise its ugly head. Blatty duly agreed, made the movie, and then watched on helplessly as the Studio decided to hack and cut it for a theatre release. What we end up watching is a strong horror movie that unfortunately is brought down by Studio editing and re-shoots to shoe horn in an exorcism angle. What could have been if Blatty's version was released!

Blatty wisely decides to erase all knowledge of Boorman's travesty and instead focuses in on Lt. Kinderman and Father Dyer from the original movie and surprisingly Damien Karras! Yes Karras died in the original movie but Blatty manages to pull off a pretty cool twist to the plot to bring him back. Hey no spoilers, but it rocks the house down.

Blatty manages to build a pretty compelling murder mystery, on the back of an outstanding performance from the legendary George C. Scott as Lt. Kinderman. In a sleight of hand Blatty mixes in some serious good supernatural occurrences. Okay by midway through the movie we know exactly who is committing the murders, but then with Kinderman we join the dots to work out how the perpetrator is able to commit the murders. Not surprisingly in involves a whole bunch of paranormal shenanigans that added some spice to my happy meal.

A much better movie than Boorman's second flick, but it still has issues, mainly due to studio involvement

I was surprised at just how good some of the spooky scenes were as Blatty shows he has a solid understanding of what makes the dark genre click. I was impressed with the scene where Kinderman is questioning a Priest about whether or not the Priest believes in possession. They both hear a noise from outside the Priest's office and Kinderman goes to investigate, what follows is a smorgasbord of tension as the paranormal activity raises its profile. Similarly another Priest, Farther Morning, comes under supernatural assault in his room, lots of wind, crosses dropping off walls etc, and I got to say a solid enough tension dose is being dealt out. Blatty's best scene however involves a static camera pointed down a hospital corridor. A nurse is working late at night and checks a number of doors, clearly hearing something, the audience knows something is coming but Blatty strings us along till delivering one hell of a shock scene. Added marmalade in the movie is one character crawling around the ceiling, with Kinderman totally unaware underneath. It's a sticking image, and has been reproduced ad infinitum since in other movies.

Naturally, since this is an Exorcist movie, there's plenty of demonic activity with some tight scenes involving Kinderman and the possessed. Without giving too much away we are back to the idea of there only ever being one possessing entity, mentioned in the dialogue, which makes you wonder about the identity of our psychotic killer. An excellent scene involving Kinderman's family and a nurse also had me nodding my head in approval as we get a bit of body jumping going down.

For those with some time in Country in this franchise the dialogue between Kinderman and Dyer is direct from the original The Exorcist novel, clearly Batty was a bit miffed about it not be included in the original movie and has taken his chance to insert it here. It works as light hearted banter between Kinderman and Dyer, though George C. Scott has a slight tendency to follow Richard Burton's tendency to outbursts ala Exorcist II: The Heretic.

Okay not everything about Exorcist III meets with approval but in defence of Blatty this can largely be placed at the feet of the Studio who argued the movie needed an exorcism regardless of the narrative flow. Firstly there's a dream sequence Kinderman goes through that has very little meaning in the context of the movie besides featuring cameos from Fabio, Samuel L. Jackson, and Patrick Ewing surprisingly. In a standard Studio editing move that turns a cool scene into mush Kinderman investigates strange noises at night in a darkened building, we get a quick flash of what looks like a statute in clown makeup and then there's a jump scare! Apparently in the original version this scene was longer and actually made sense. And final the whole Father Morning plotline was inserted because the Studio required an exorcism, regardless of how it interrupted the movie flow. I'm not even going to go near the resolution, another major face palming situation. No doubt the suits at the Studio were left scratching their heads after the movie bombed on cinema release.

Exorcist III picks up the pieces left from the shattering The Heretic made of the original, but unlike the phoenix the franchise wasn't reborn, it sort of drifted. Movie number three was strong enough to be a standalone horror outing but as usual the Studio couldn't leave well enough alone and just had to include things that were best left out and edited certain scenes to make them nonsensical. It's almost as if the Studio wanted the movie to fail, they certain did their level best to achieve that. While Exorcist III has defenders I'm not one of them. Sure it's better than the second movie, and for sure there are some great scenes, but overall the movie is something of a mess. Guarded recommendation, there are some cool scenes to groove too, though to be honest we're not getting a solid enough movie to justify taking time out of our busy schedules to check out. The problems with the movie might not be legion, but they are enough to be noticeable.