What is the scariest movie you’ve seen? If you ask most horror fans, The Exorcist will likely be in their top five. But ask about its sequel, The Exorcist II: The Heretic, and those same horror fans would probably walk away from you. In the documentary Boorman and the Devil, writer/director David Kittredge sits down with director John Boorman himself to discuss that film’s troubled production and the director’s own legacy.
We begin with a voiceover from Boorman, played over highlights from The Exorcist II, in which he reflects on how everything you do to make a film comes down to a light flickering on a wall, and then you just hope that flicker turns into money. It’s a fitting way to open the documentary, foreshadowing the failure that The Exorcist II: The Heretic would become.
Before diving into the film itself, Kittredge gives the audience some context and the state of film in the ’60s and how studios overspent on big movies. As they started to scale back, Boorman’s Point Blank got him noticed, and Deliverance catapulted him to the A-list. Surprisingly, he was actually approached to direct the original Exorcist and turned it down. It’s only later, while talking with a studio executive about what would eventually become Excalibur, that a treatment for an Exorcist sequel comes up, and that’s what convinces Boorman to sign on.
Director John Boorman reflects on his career in the documentary Boorman and the Devil.
“…sits down with director John Boorman himself to discuss that film’s troubled production and the director’s own legacy.”
The documentary then moves into the making of the film. To get a greenlight, it first needed script approval from Linda Blair, who reportedly landed a hefty million-dollar payday as a 17-year-old. As the treatment took shape into a script, the death of an actor from the first film forced changes to the story, and there were plenty more changes throughout production. There are also some amusing stories about casting Richard Burton and how his drinking affected the work hours.
The part of the documentary that resonated with me most was watching Boorman and his crew build the sets and work out how to pull off certain shots. I’ve never seen the film and never had much desire to, but after watching this section, I’m actually tempted to put it on just to see those scenes in full. Another highlight is the look at film distribution during that era and how movie theater chains operated, theaters across the U.S. would bid a certain amount of money to secure the film, which helped fund production costs. That meant delivering late or pushing back the release simply wasn’t an option, and that pressure is ultimately what did the film in.
I don’t think any director has a perfect track record, whether it’s Spielberg, Nolan, or Tarantino. There’s always that one title people don’t love. And while this documentary spends plenty of time on the troubled production of The Exorcist II, it really plays more like a love letter to Boorman as a director. It captures the struggles directors go through, the workarounds they rely on, and how they deal with failure.
In the end, I think most people will associate Boorman with Deliverance, not this bad sequel. For me, I remember catching Excalibur on cable, and it still resonates with me to this day. I truly believe Boorman gave us the best version of the King Arthur story that cinema has seen, and I loved that Kittredge found room to reference it in this documentary.
"…What is the scariest movie you've seen?"
