It was 1977. People were actually lining up around the block to see a sequel to the scariest movie ever made. They expected head-spinning, pea soup, and the visceral terror of William Friedkin’s original masterpiece. What they got was The Exorcist II: The Heretic, a movie so baffling that audiences in some theaters reportedly threw things at the screen. Honestly, it’s legendary for all the wrong reasons.
Director John Boorman didn't want to make a horror movie. That was the first mistake. He famously hated the first film, calling it "repulsive." Imagine being hired to direct a sequel to a movie you despise. He wanted to create a metaphysical, soaring epic about goodness and telepathy. It’s a bold swing, sure, but the landing was less of a graceful tuck and more of a belly flop into a dry pool.
What went wrong with The Exorcist II: The Heretic?
The plot is a fever dream. We find Linda Blair’s Regan MacNeil living in a futuristic, glass-walled penthouse in New York. She’s seemingly fine, but she’s undergoing therapy with Dr. Gene Tushman (played by the great Louise Fletcher). They use this "Synchronizer" device—basically a strobe light that looks like a high-tech disco prop—to link brains. Father Lamont, played by a very intense Richard Burton, arrives to investigate the death of Father Merrin.
Burton’s performance is... a lot. He’s sweating. He’s shouting. He’s looking at things with a frantic energy that suggests he knows exactly how weird this script is. The movie moves from New York to a meticulously built (and wildly expensive) African village set, chasing the origins of the demon Pazuzu and a "good" locust named Kokumo.
The Locusts and the Landscape
Visually, the film is stunning in a disconnected way. Boorman used massive sets at Warner Bros. instead of location shooting. It gives the whole thing an eerie, stagey quality that feels more like a dream than a reality. But when you have James Earl Jones dressed as a giant locust, the "dream" starts feeling like a hallucination you'd rather wake up from.
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Critics were brutal. Pauline Kael was not a fan. William Peter Blatty, the author of the original novel, reportedly laughed out loud when he finally saw it. He wasn't the only one. The tone shifts are jarring. One moment it’s a psychological drama, the next it’s a bizarre sci-fi journey into the "ancestral memory" of a swarm of insects.
The Production Disaster
The behind-the-scenes stories are almost as chaotic as the film itself. Boorman contracted San Joaquin Valley Fever during filming, which shut down production for over a month. This led to mounting costs and a rushed post-production schedule. The script was being rewritten constantly. Linda Blair has since mentioned in interviews that the script she signed on for was vastly different from the one they ended up shooting.
- The Synchronizer: That weird head-syncing device was supposed to represent a bridge between souls, but it just looked like a bad trip.
- The Edit: After the disastrous premiere, Boorman actually went back and re-cut the film, removing about 13 minutes of footage to try and save it. It didn't work.
- The Music: If there’s one bright spot, it’s Ennio Morricone’s score. It’s haunting and beautiful, even if it feels like it belongs to a much better movie.
The movie cost about $14 million, which was huge for the late 70s. It made money initially because of the brand name, but word of mouth killed it. It’s the quintessential "sophomore slump" on a galactic scale.
Why some people actually defend it now
Interestingly, The Exorcist II: The Heretic has developed a tiny, very vocal cult following. Martin Scorsese is a noted fan. He praised its visual ambition. It’s easy to see why a filmmaker would appreciate the risks Boorman took. He wasn't trying to copy Friedkin; he was trying to evolve the story into something spiritual and cosmic.
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But for the average horror fan? It’s a mess. It ignores the grounded, gritty realism that made the first one so terrifying. Instead of a girl in a bedroom, we have psychic locusts. Instead of a battle for a soul, we have a philosophical debate about the nature of evil being a physical "biological" force.
It’s basically a case study in how not to handle a franchise. You have to respect the DNA of the original. If you strip away the scares and the tension, you’re just left with a guy in a priest collar looking confused at a strobe light.
The Legacy of the Heretic
Today, we see the film as a turning point in horror history. It taught studios that you can’t just throw money and big names at a sequel and expect it to work if the core vision is misaligned. It paved the way for The Exorcist III, which ignored this movie entirely and went back to the roots of the story (and is actually quite good).
If you're going to watch it, go in with an open mind. Don't expect a horror movie. Expect a high-budget, bizarre, 1970s experimental art piece that just happens to have the word "Exorcist" in the title.
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Actionable Insights for Horror Fans and Collectors
If you want to experience the madness of this film properly, avoid the heavily edited TV versions. You need the full, unadulterated Boorman vision to truly appreciate the scale of the oddity.
- Seek out the Scream Factory Blu-ray: It contains both the theatrical cut and the shorter "re-cut" version Boorman made after the initial backlash. The interviews on this disc provide a lot of context for the mess.
- Listen to the Morricone Score separately: It’s genuinely one of the best horror-adjacent soundtracks of the era. It works better when you aren't distracted by the locusts.
- Read "The Exorcist: Out of the Shadows": This book by Trevor Moore gives a deep dive into the production troubles and the shift in tone that led to the film's reputation.
- Watch it as a Double Feature with Exorcist III: Seeing the two back-to-back shows the two different directions a sequel can go—one that takes a wild, abstract detour and one that returns to the source material's atmosphere.
The movie isn't "good" in a traditional sense. It’s a fascinating failure. It represents a time when directors were given massive budgets to take insane risks. Even if it didn't work, there's something respectable about a movie this weird existing at all.
To understand the full scope of the franchise, you have to reckon with the "Heretic." It stands as a warning to filmmakers and a curiosity for cinephiles who love a beautiful, expensive disaster.