Films that time forgot: The Exorcist III (1990)

The Exorcist III was released worldwide across the summer and autumn of 1990 and into the winter of 1991. Directed by William Peter Blatty, the film did solid business at the global box office – $39 million dollars from an $11 million budget.

Based on the novel Legion (1983), also by Blatty, The Exorcist III picked up fifteen years after Father Karras (Jason Miller) took a tumble down those iconic Georgetown steps. It ignored completely events depicted in John Boorman’s poorly received sequel, Exorcist II: The Heretic (1977).

Blatty had no interest in the further development of characters and the demonic-possession scenario found in his novel and the subsequent smash-hit 1973 screen adaptation, memorably directed by William Friedkin. In Mark Kermode’s Fangoria article (Issue #122, May 1993), that detailed the third picture’s production and post-production woes, the director/screenwriter/novelist recalled the eventual spark of inspiration:

“Father John Nicola told me of this psychiatrist friend who had become interested in possession after seeing this episode. This man was in a disturbed ward at St. Elizabeth’s Hospital, when into a room came a man in a business suit. And pandemonium broke out: screaming patients shouting obscenities, banging on the bedsteads … all of which stopped when the man left the room. It later transpired the man was a priest in civvies, carrying the communion in his top pocket. So I thought, what about dealing with a demon in a hospital who moves from one empty shattered psyche to another?”

After several false starts and a change of studio (the film was distributed by Twentieth Century Fox and produced by Morgan Creek), the go-ahead was given. Soon enough the suits clashed with Blatty over the picture’s cerebral, philosophical angle – and the fact there was no exorcism. The script’s witty dialogue did not sit well, either. After all, what’s funny about the epic battle between God and Satan’s minions?

Lt. Kindermann, a peripheral character in the original film (but not the book), is now an aging detective (played by George C. Scott) on the case of a vicious serial murderer who has a penchant for perverse theatricality: he mutilates corpses with cryptically staged, albeit, clear blasphemous symbolism. Is this the work of the dreaded Gemini Killer? The modus operandi is spookily familiar to the Georgetown police department. Just one more thing (as Columbo would say): the Gemini Killer has been presumed dead for fifteen years.

Kindermann is the classic existentialist figure struggling with what little faith he has left. Father Dyer (played by Ed Flanders) is the true believer. The two verbally spar through the film each with a retort for the other or comic remark on theology or the nature of belief systems. Kindermann is unsure whether the Gemini Killer is really back from the dead. And how does all this link to the demise of the saintly Father Karras? (Jason Miller).

The Exorcist III is a low-key gem. Instead of reemploying William Friedkin’s documentary style tactics, Blatty chose to build atmosphere and creeping fear from a different, though equally stylised, techniques. The film would be, essentially, a whodunit with fantastical overtones. That was how it was conceived, anyway.

As mentioned, producers were not happy with Blatty’s lo-fi approach. “Where’s the exorcism?” they very well must have asked.(There wasn’t one.) Under pressure, Blatty was forced to provide the obligatory ‘money shot’ in order to appease his paymasters and not disappoint the audience.

The ceremony – a completely unnecessary moment – sees a character named Father Morning (actor Nicol Williamson looks a bit like Max von Sydow) suddenly face off against the spirit of the Gemini Killer. It is utterly at odds with the nature of the material and the careful scares delivered by Blatty. (Including a much-celebrated sequence set in a hospital corridor.)

The critical reaction to The Exorcist III was mixed. Robert Firsching of The New York Times – and a fan – commented: “The Exorcist III is heavy on dialogue, but contains some fine performances and some chilling moments, particularly the haunting opening in a Georgetown church.”

The venerable Kim Newman wasn’t so persuaded by Blatty’s film and claimed in his review for Empire that the “major fault in [The] Exorcist III is the house-of-cards plot that is constantly collapsing.”

There is a book in the works, The Evolution Of William Peter Blatty’s The Exorcist III: From Concept To Novel To Screen, that will detail the film’s history. (It could be a series given what happened to Paul Schrader’s doomed attempt, Dominion: Prequel To The Exorcist, 2005).

In 2012 a ‘fan’ re-edited the picture to remove the studio-imposed scenes and put the finished result on the internet. Blatty has expressed, in the past, an interest in re-editing the movie himself, but Morgan Creek have either destroyed the excised footage or the reels are sat alone – perhaps humming with supernatural force à la Raiders of the Lost Ark – in the darkened depths of an archive.

Tagged as: Brad Dourif, Exorcist II: The Heretic, George C. Scott, Jason Miller, Legion, Mark Kermode, the exorcist, The Exorcist III, william friedkin, William Peter Blatty