Boorman and the Devil

Acclaimed directors generally have stinkers of their own. A few that come to mind are the Coen Brothers' The Ladykillers, and John Carpenter's Memoirs of an Invisible Man. With those however, they were lucky not to be sequels to one of the biggest box office hits of all time, and perhaps the scariest film ever made according to many, The Exorcist.

One sign of the sequel's evential doom at the box office, and for the most part its reputation since its release decades ago, was whether to even directly call it a sequel in its official title. Not out of shame - they felt their final product came together quite nicely prior to its final test screenings - but out of uncertainty. They may not have seen the whole situation for what it was at the time, but not knowing whether to associate itself to its very reason for exisiting in the first place was a bad .... Omen.

This documentary, about the creation and release of Deliverance director John Boorman's 1977 Exorcist II: The Heretic, is itself just OK. It's your standard collection of interviews with clips from the film spliced in, historical behind-the-scenes footage, and media footage from the era showing the intensity of the anticipation, which soon becomes ridicule for the final product. So, if you're not interested in this subject matter, you're probably not missing much. However, for cinephiles, I definitely recommend this. While we all enjoy documentaries on our most beloved and popular films, for me what I find more fascinating is documentaries on dreams unrealized. Was the reaction to The Heretic what they hoped for? No. And so I'm instantly fascinated in the "what went wrong?" of it all. Seeing the passion behind films that didn't turn out as planned is far more interesting and dramatic in my view.

So while we continue to anticipate those long-awaited documentaries for Caddyshack II and Leonard Part 6, Boorman and the Devil does a good job of filling in the gaps.