Whereas The Exorcist has endured as a horror masterpiece, this 1973 William Friedkin directorial effort has spawned some actually chaotic and cursed sequels. Exorcist II: The Heretic is extensively thought to be one of many worst motion pictures of all time, whereas the manufacturing of the fourth entry, The Exorcist: The Starting, was plagued with fixed issues and ended up spawning two totally different drastically totally different cuts lengthy earlier than “The Snyder Reduce” entered the web discourse lexicon. Due to these points, it may be astonishing to comprehend watching Peter William Blatty’s 1990 movement image The Exorcist III that this isn’t only a step up from different Exorcist follow-ups, it is a genuinely well-made and unnerving movement image.
Sadly, The Exorcist III’s theatrical reduce is capped off with a clumsy ending that was mandated by studio executives. The inorganic nature of this conclusion is manifestly obvious for numerous causes and gives a frustratingly disjointed decision to what’s in any other case been a considerate extension of the unique Exorcist.
What Occurred In the course of the Manufacturing of The Exorcist III?
The ebook The Exorcist: Out of the Shadows options numerous passages that make clear the behind-the-scenes context of The Exorcist III’s awkward ending. William Peter Blatty recollects on this textual content that, a few months after the shoot for The Exorcist III was accomplished, the movie’s manufacturing firm, Morgan Creek Productions, rang him as much as inform him that the climax wanted to be altered. Of their opinion, an Exorcist film wanted an exorcism. Blatty could not refuse their request, so he started working on a brand new finale. This new conclusion would introduce a brand-new character, Father Morning (Nicol Williamson) and plenty of splashy spectacle as this priest and protagonist William F. Kinderman (George C. Scott) attempt to take away the spirit that has possessed the corpse of Damien Karras (Jason Miller).
Although Blatty carried out to studio’s needs, he was by no means glad with how the sequence turned out. His emotions are already extremely comprehensible earlier than one considers how this swiftly reshot ending contrasts with the unique conclusion Blatty filmed. Initially, The Exorcist III would’ve ended with Kinderman, after narrowly saving his household from a murderous nurse, merely strolling in and capturing the possessed Karras. It might’ve been an understated conclusion to a movie that’s all about subtlety, to not point out one thing drastically totally different from the well-known climax of The Exorcist.
As an alternative of delivering that ending, Blatty was compelled to make one thing that might each by no means have the ability to escape the shadow of the unique Exorcist’s finale and really feel at odds with the previous film. The latter problem is particularly obvious since this new finale’s tone is borderline insulting in how a lot it rubs up in opposition to the remainder of The Exorcist III.
What Went Flawed With the Reshot Exorcist III Ending
For a lot of The Exorcist III, author/director Blatty is content material to let the environment of this movie be an unnerving simmer. It is a story about human beings like Kinderman reeling from the horrors of the world they can not clarify, whether or not it’s the occasions of the preliminary Exorcist film or the terrifying actions of the ruthless Gemini Killer. Many of the characters stroll round in a fugue state, whereas Scott’s quiet line deliveries counsel that he’s resigned himself to the waves of confusion and sorrow which have consumed him.
The vast majority of the grotesque deaths that maintain the plot shifting alongside, together with of Kinderman’s buddy Father Dyer (Ed Flanders), are saved off-screen. Extra distinctive methods of conveying their demises are employed, corresponding to Kinderman encountering Dyer, who has stitches round his neck, in a imaginative and prescient of Heaven simply earlier than he learns that he’s been murdered. By way of these means, The Exorcist III quietly emphasizes that the true terror right here isn’t seeing homicide however dwelling with the information that murderous evil exists. Simply attempting to go a couple of day-to-day existence cognizant of this gives a heavy anchor to at least one’s soul.
These are all such considerate qualities of The Exorcist III that, sadly, get thrown out the window for the climax. Abruptly, we’re seeing individuals pinned to the ceiling and having their flesh peeled off by the chants of Satanic forces. Worse, the movie even undercuts earlier acts of violence that have been so successfully saved off-screen. One of many first murders within the movie is of a younger Black boy named Thomas Kintry. His demise shakes Kinderman to his core, a truth made obvious as he describes the youth’s violent demise and the hideous indisputable fact that his face was lined in Blackface make-up when the cops discovered his corpse.
Preserving this off-screen was what made this improvement efficient because it left the boy’s demise to the viewers’s creativeness. Sadly, that type of restraint is deserted for this finale, as Kintry’s corpse all of a sudden reveals up nailed to a cross in a imaginative and prescient delivered to Kinderman by the possessed priest. The dialogue-heavy strategy to exploring how violence leaves an inescapable mark on an individual’s psychology has now been traded out for this sort of splashy spectacle. The Exorcist III has traded quiet-but-impactful for loud-but-hollow in its finale, all to appease studio executives who consider you may recreate the horrors of The Exorcist on a dime.
The issues with this reshot climax are limitless, however an particularly egregious shortcoming is the awkward presence of Father Morning. Abruptly displaying up within the plot simply so this film can do a classical exorcism sequence, it’s unimaginable to get invested in Morning since we’ve by no means gotten to know him earlier than this intense religious showdown. It additionally implies that Kinderman, the protagonist of the story, is sidelined for a lot of the finale. What can he do throughout an exorcism as only a police investigator? The beforehand grounded nature of The Exorcist III allowed an fascinating everyman protagonist like Kinderman an opportunity to flourish, however this awkward heightened climax pushes him off to the sidelines.
The Exorcist III’s Story Does Not Finish With This Awkward Conclusion
The Exorcist III is a surprisingly good film, very atmospheric and sometimes displaying spectacular restraint and an incredible sense of timing in its scares. A crummy finale can’t completely tank the film, but it surely does present the type of issues so many motion pictures face in navigating the studio system. Executives typically simply need an encore of what’s labored earlier than, so doing one thing totally different is sure to make them nervous. The Exorcist III so typically excels as a result of it eschews doing what you’d anticipate from an Exorcist film, whereas its climax is so poor as a result of it’s attempting too arduous to imitate what it thinks audiences need out of an Exorcist installment.
Fortunately, the story of The Exorcist III didn’t finish with simply this theatrical reduce. For years, followers clamored to see Blatty’s preliminary imaginative and prescient for this film, together with that authentic ending. Although a lot of the deleted footage was initially thought-about to be misplaced, most of that footage, together with a lot of the unique ending, was restored in a snazzy Blu-ray launch from Shout! Manufacturing facility in 2016. With this launch, viewers may lastly have an opportunity to expertise Blatty’s imaginative and prescient for this Exorcist installment whereas the curse that plagues these Exorcist sequels was lastly, if solely quickly, put to relaxation.
