Boorman and the Devil review – enjoyable re-evaluation of the disaster that was Exorcist II: The Heretic

John Boorman generously details the mortifying experience of making a sequel to 1973 hit horror The Exorcist, which was widely and unfairly panned David Kittredge gives us a thoroughly enjoyable, detailed account of the catastrophe that was John Boorman’s 1977 film Exorcist II: The Heretic, the deeply ill-conceived and widely derided follow-up to The Exorcist, a bizarre but ambitious fantasy supernatural rhapsody, brimming with unintentional comedy.

Yet it was visually bold and even brilliant, pioneering in its use of Steadicam; Linda Blair and Max von Sydow were persuaded to return; Richard Burton was cast as a troubled priest, and Louise Fletcher as a psychiatrist whose weird “mind-reader” contraption was entirely ridiculous. At the first film, people screamed. Now they screamed with laughter. According to an apocryphal tale gleefully…