Boorman and the Devil and the Beautiful Disaster of Exorcist II: The Heretic
Is Exorcist II: The Heretic really one of the worst sequels ever made, or have we been watching it all wrong Dear Listener?
Thanks to the documentary Boorman and the Devil, Jett and Gareth reconsider a movie that has been mocked for nearly 50 years. They explore Boorman's career, from Point Blank and Deliverance to Excalibur and The Emerald Forest, and examine how The Heretic fits into his lifelong fascination with myth, nature, and spirituality.
Along the way: Richard Burton's hypnotic screen presence, the spiritual differences between the two Exorcist films, and the mysterious synchronizer that just might explain 20 years of The Film Talk.
Sometimes folks the most interesting movies aren't necessarily the best ones.
Films discussed: Exorcist II: The Heretic (1977) and Boorman and the Devil (2025).
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Jett (00:02.045)
Gareth, I gotta ask you a question before we get to the theme music and all that bits of business. Have you ever watched a documentary about a movie that has completely, 100 percent transformed your idea of the movie that the documentary is talking about?Gareth (00:16.002)
I'd have to think about that. I'm wondering, is it possible, Jett, that you might have done that, and perhaps recently, connected to this very episode? I know I'm not Sherlock Holmes, but I'm trying to engage my highest powers of deductive reasoning here. Is it possible that something like this has just happened to you?Jett (00:37.084)
It is absolutely possible. Let's get right into it.Jett (00:44.594)
Hey there, folks, how are you? Welcome once again to The Film Talk. It's the 20-year-and-going ongoing conversation about movies and what they mean and why they're important, quite frankly. I'm Jett Loe.Gareth (00:56.908)
Gareth Higgins. The conversation never ends, and I am delighted that we're talking about these two films today. Exorcist II, originally titled The Heretic, now called Exorcist II: The Heretic. I'm going to call it The Heretic for the rest of this episode and then potentially confuse people because wasn't there a film with Hugh Grant called Heretic just last year? This is the real heretic.Jett (01:17.862)
Listen, the only Hugh Grant film I'm interested in is The Lair of the White Worm.Gareth (01:23.019)
Ken Russell's having a moment. Ken Russell's having a moment. We'll have to do The Devils soon. So, The Heretic, the sequel to The Exorcist, directed by John Boorman, and Boorman and the Devil, a documentary that is ostensibly about the making of The Heretic, but it's actually also an overview of Boorman's career, directed by David Kittredge. We're going to talk about both of these films.Jett (01:33.788)
Absolutely.Jett (01:55.412)
Give me about 10 minutes. I want to zoom.Gareth (01:58.293)
And I'm assuming that we should talk about The Heretic first. Shall we do that?Jett (02:06.484)
Absolutely. Let's get into it. Dear listeners, Gareth has been almost pleading with me these last few weeks to watch John Boorman's film Exorcist II: The Heretic, or as Gareth calls it, Heretic or The Heretic. And I couldn't figure out why. Put it on, watched it with my wife, and I was astounded. I kept saying to my wife, why does Gareth want me to watch this? This is a terrible piece of trash filmmaking from one of the greatest of directors, right? John Boorman.Point Blank, Hell in the Pacific, Deliverance, the astonishing Excalibur, The Emerald Forest, one of my favorites, Hope and Glory, and The General. Zardoz, I love. One of the greatest directors. And what is this dumpster fire of poorly edited nonsense and terribly shot model work that is Exorcist II: The Heretic? And then I watched the documentary.
Gareth (02:38.732)
The Emerald Forest.Gareth (02:45.727)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.Mm-hmm.
Jett (03:05.918)
Boorman and the Devil. Then I watched The Heretic again. Totally transformed. But let's—we'll get into it. Let's talk Exorcist II: The Heretic.Gareth (03:16.27)
So The Heretic is the first sequel to The Exorcist, which, dear listener, you know that the original Exorcist—by which I mean the original cut that wasn't released—is one of my favorite films. It's a film that I watch every couple of years. I watch it as a contemplative exercise because what that film says about sacrificial love is so extraordinary that it's one of the things that gets missed in people's memory of the film.People remember it for its scares, and sure, it's scary, although I think less scary today than it was then, partly because the effects in it seem so clunky. But the depth of that film is about what you would do in order to save someone more vulnerable than yourself. How far would you be willing to go?
And there's a scene in that—and I'm gonna name this specifically because it's connected to The Heretic—there's a scene that shows up in what, whether it's called the director's cut or The Version You've Never Seen, the version that was not released, a scene where Jason Miller, playing Father Karras, is sitting on the stairs outside the room where the exorcism has been suspended, because it turns out you can take a break, you can have an intermission in an exorcism, asking Max von Sydow, playing Father Merrin, why is this thing happening to one so innocent, to a little child who's been possessed by the devil Pazuzu—apparently not the actual CEO devil, but like a junior devil, Pazuzu.
And one of the most thoughtful, philosophically rich, psychologically integrated, spiritually grounded pieces of dialogue in any movie comes next when Father Merrin says, I think the point is to make us despair.
But if something so terrible can happen to one who we know to be innocent, how much worse do we deserve, who know ourselves not to be innocent? Now, he's not advocating the idea that we're not innocent and we deserve these things. It's more that if we're confronted, almost kind of—I think about those things in a boxing gym, the kind of little balls that hang from the ceiling where you're kind of punching them, punching them, punching them—as if that was being hit back into your face over and over and over again.
Gareth (05:41.261)
By the story that says we are shit, or worse than shit, and that we deserve nothing better than that. This film is trying to shatter that idea by showing that sacrificial love, the fact that we are capable of sacrificial love, is a response to the love of which we are worthy.The Heretic is the sequel to that film. Strangely enough, Boorman, a director who I love as much as you do, one of the most thoughtful directors—he's written several books of memoir. You should read them all. I think I've read them all. Money into Light being the first one, which was intended to be a diary of the making of The Emerald Forest. But it turns out by the time he gets to the jungle to make the film, he doesn't have the time to keep the diary anymore. So it's really a diary about the pre-production and the post-production of that film.
He's a very thoughtful, reflective man, and he's a man deeply into questions of myth and the sacred. I think he had a mistaken interpretation of the first Exorcist. He feels that it's a film about abusing a child. I think it's a film, as I say, about sacrificial love. But in a sense, I'm glad that he misread it because that's what motivated him to make the sequel.
And the sequel, while I'm not gonna try to make the case that it's a good film—I think it's an incomplete film—but more importantly than that, I think it's a brilliantly ambitious, even wise film that just doesn't fully hang together. And it is motivated by the desire: if the first Exorcist was about evil, the second Exorcist film is about good.
And there's a whole lot of theologically rich stuff in it. It's the only film I know of where one character says to another, there was this priest called Teilhard de Chardin, who prophesied that one day human beings would all be connected to each other by a kind of telepathy. The concern is whether or not we're going to be telepathically connected to the devil or God.
First, I don't think I've seen a film with Teilhard de Chardin's name mentioned in it before. I don't think I've seen a film where a sequel gives a character who in the first film was sort of the object of the film's action to become the subject in the second film. Linda Blair's character, Regan, really does get to—
Gareth (08:06.465)
She gets to act consciously in ways that move the narrative forward in this film. I think some of the imagery in this film is among the most beautiful of its time. And you get bonus James Earl Jones and Ned Beatty too, and an Ennio Morricone score. A lovely performance from Louise Fletcher. And then something else from Richard Burton.And before I hand back to you, Jett, I want to say this about Richard Burton. I think Richard Burton is the actor version of this film because this film has a terrible reputation, but when you watch it, it's utterly compelling. I don't know—I don't think Richard Burton's a good actor. I really don't. I'm always seeing Richard Burton every time I watch him. But you cannot take your eyes off him in this film. There's more to say about it. That's where I'm starting. Are we gonna have a clip? I think we should have a clip.
Jett (09:01.822)
You're talking about a clip from Exorcist II: The Heretic? The—not Heretic?Gareth (09:07.337)
Or you could do the clip of Richard Burton paying tribute to Frank Sinatra at a lifetime achievement awards ceremony, which is either one of the best or worst pieces of acting I've ever seen.Jett (09:18.268)
You're using—I mean, I could respond to you at length. You hit a huge number of points. If you want to start with Burton, I think you're minimizing him and putting him in a box. You have to define what acting is because—Gareth (09:28.161)
Okay. And I don't—I mean, I know I sound negative. I actually—I don't know that I'm saying it right. I'm not sure he's a good actor, but he's utterly compelling.Jett (09:39.294)
Well, I don't know. You'd have to define what do you mean by good actor because I don't—we're not talking about the stage or—Gareth (09:41.827)
Well, I don't know. You tell me. Hold on, you said heretic, heretic, heretic earlier, and like, is a triple heretic not a heretic?Jett (09:50.771)
You don't want to say that too many times in the mirror because then a drunk Richard Burton—a drunk Richard Burton with makeup on his face to conceal a very obvious bruise that he probably got while falling over drunk in the film—Well, he's a screen—if you think about screen acting, he's got an incredible presence. So I'm not gonna call that bad. If you watch The Wild Geese, you can't take your eyes off him, and he's fantastic. And otherwise you might say, well, this film is not that great, but—
Gareth (10:07.244)
Yeah. Presence.Gareth (10:13.354)
Okay, fair enough, fair enough.Gareth (10:19.267)
Becket.Jett (10:20.712)
But he's fantastic. Now, I mean, also, and it's great, I think, for scientific research. Because when you watch Exorcist II—no, stay with me—you know, science often has a problem. How do you actually record in real time, like in a laboratory, somebody sleepwalking? And here we have Richard Burton sleepwalking through the whole movie. I'm not saying he's drunk, I'm saying he's sleepwalking.Listen, you bring up a huge amount.
Gareth (10:48.664)
I thought you were gonna talk about the synchronizer or the synthesizer, the extrapolizer. Like—Jett (10:52.53)
Ridiculous. Ridiculous. Okay. Okay. All right.Gareth (10:56.302)
'Cause we—I mean, I think when I watch those scenes where they're telepathically tuning into each other through devices attached to their heads, like, we've been doing that for 20 years. You and I have been doing that for 20. We're doing it right now.Jett (11:07.684)
The weird thing, dear listener, you've got to watch this film. And again, my feelings after watching David Kittredge's documentary about it, I've totally, totally changed my opinion about it. But the film is odd in a variety of ways.Gareth mentions the synchronizer there with these flashing lights that goes on forever, as if it's an advertisement for, you know, synchronizer products. They wear these headbands with these ridiculous wires hanging off. The prop is terrible.
Gareth (11:16.397)
Yeah.Jett (11:35.762)
Don't have wires hanging down in front of the actors' faces. It looks ridiculous. You could just clip the wires off, but nobody did that. I'm like, why didn't anybody say anything to John Boorman to say, this looks terrible?Gareth (11:44.341)
Did you know it's—Gareth (11:49.092)
Well, and for such an extraordinary piece of hardware that enables people to literally read each other's thoughts and dreams, they just keep it in a drawer. You know? So that Regan can take it. And Regan is a person of conscience because she does say, hey, I took the synchronizer, just so you know.Jett (11:58.965)
Well, the problem—Jett (12:08.934)
The prop looks like it costs a dollar ninety-five. And the film, dear listener, it spends so much time on the synchronizer. Like, where is the synchronizer? We get the synchronizer, and then the synchronizer goes missing. What happened to the synchronizer? I'm like, why is this film in the pocket of Big Synchronizer? It's not clear.But look, look, look, I want to address with you some of the things you talked about in your soliloquy, in your mon—I'll call it a monologue that almost went as long as Tom Cruise's in Digger. A brilliant film, by the way.
Gareth (12:28.868)
Yes.Gareth (12:36.449)
I'm truth-telling. I'm truth-telling. Our aspect ratio is staying wide.Jett (12:38.524)
You know, you can't handle the truth.You talk about how Boorman misinterpreted, or interpreted, if you want to use the word incorrectly, if it would be pejorative, the original Exorcist about child abuse, abusing a child. I think you have to keep in mind that that idea of abuse of a child was a cultural consensus about that film when Boorman was making Exorcist II. So that was part of the cultural conversation. That was kind of an accepted—
Gareth (13:00.854)
Uh-huh.Jett (13:07.368)
Fact.Now we're looking at these films from, you know, decades removed, right? We're at a later time and therefore we see it very differently. But the power of The Exorcist, William Friedkin's brilliant film, is still evident, and I would argue inherent in how I responded to Exorcist II.
In Kittredge's documentary, they talk very clearly how audiences were upset. I don't think they used the word bait-and-switch, but that's probably what they felt like. They thought they were gonna get a sequel to The Exorcist.
Gareth (13:11.982)
Mm-hmm.Gareth (13:29.625)
Yeah. Yeah.Yes.
Jett (13:35.517)
And they didn't. They got something totally different.Now, here we are, 50 years afterwards, when you tell me to watch Exorcist II, and I did, knowing nothing about it other than it's made by the great John Boorman, I laughed at it. I thought, this is terrible. Because I, in the context for the film, and even though 50 years later, even though I haven't seen any marketing material for the movie, was that it's a sequel to The Exorcist. So then it totally fails.
Then you watch Kittredge's documentary and you realize, no, this is a film that is completely—
Gareth (13:36.623)
Mm-hmm.Jett (14:04.178)
It's a fairy tale. This film is—this is like The Curse of the Cat People. Folks, if you didn't listen to our original version of The Film Talk, I think I said in the opening credits of that show how The Curse of the Cat People is better than The Wizard of Oz, or is as good as The Wizard of Oz.There's a great movie called Cat People. Has an amazing jump scare, one of the most effective, maybe one of the earliest jump scares in sound, anyway. Cat People's great. Then they make The Curse of the Cat People.
Gareth (14:07.072)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.Gareth (14:16.729)
Mm-hmm, mm-hmm.Jett (14:30.322)
Has almost nothing to do with cat people. It's a fairy tale, it's a fantasy, and it's a beautiful, beautiful movie.The same thing with The Heretic. You don't have to see the original Exorcist for this film to work. And if you're expecting more Exorcist, you're gonna be disappointed or you're gonna laugh at this movie, which I did.
Then I saw the Kittredge documentary and realized, no, this is a fairy tale. This is about joy. This is about goodness. This is a completely different thing. It has different objectives. It's a completely different artistic aesthetic project. And once you realize that, then the film becomes transformed.
Because the film is beautiful. It has these incredible shots with mirrors and glass and all sorts of great stuff. Is it a good movie? No, possibly because it's in the pocket of Big Synchronizer. And Richard Burton's performance is—it is. I can say that. He is in the movie. There's no question that Richard Burton is in the film.
So it's not a classically good film, but it's certainly an incredible fairy tale.
Gareth (15:06.702)
Mm-hmm.Jett (15:27.014)
And if you enjoy John Boorman's work as I do, if you enjoy Zardoz for all the critical and cultural opprobrium that film gets, then I think you'll really enjoy Exorcist II: The Heretic, not Heretic, as long as you understand what's going on going into it.Gareth (15:40.996)
Fairy tale's exactly right. Thank you for saying that. That's illuminated for me what I feel about it. Fairy tale's exactly right. And like many of the best fairy tales, it's not afraid to look at the bleakest things in life. The same as Boorman's career generally.Let's talk a little bit about this quite thoughtful, quite unusual documentary Boorman and the Devil.
It's a cut above your biography or History Channel retrospectives of an artist's career. And that was the thing that was the most pleasant surprise about Boorman and the Devil for me. I thought it was gonna be exclusively about The Heretic. It's actually—probably 20 percent of it is more of an overview of Boorman's career in cinema.
I wish there had been more of that, actually, 'cause the guy has things to say. And there's a lovely moment toward the end of the film where Kittredge asks him, you know, are you the kind of filmmaker who—I don't remember the exact words—but, you know, tried to make the world better and explore things of depth and meaning and make a real contribution? Are you that kind of filmmaker?
And Boorman says, I've tried to be.
And you see in a film like Point Blank, where he's reflecting on the poison of revenge. You see in Deliverance, a film that a lot of people that I know in Appalachia really don't like because of what is mostly remembered about it. And I'm always at pains to say to people that the Appalachian characters in Deliverance are not all bad. In fact, the two surviving city boys at the end of the movie are rescued by an Appalachian family who take them in for the night and give them a bed for the night, no questions asked.
And then, you know, you go on. You gotta see Excalibur if you haven't seen it. You gotta see The Emerald Forest if you haven't seen it.
The word I would associate with Boorman, or the phrase, is like mystical honesty. The guy is aiming for a kind of truth behind the facts.
I think it's kind of sad. I don't think he realizes that his Exorcist film is a perfect companion piece to the Exorcist film that I think he thought he was repudiating—
Gareth (18:07.843)
Or negating.I actually think they're entirely theologically in alignment with each other because they're about how goodness must be—we must oxygenate goodness in our storytelling, and that we have to be careful about how we pay attention to what we pay attention to because, if you're not careful, you can end up being hypnotized by the story that says that human beings are nothing and that they're not worthy of love.
And I can understand people watching The Exorcist and not coming out of it feeling good. The way I feel good watching The Exorcist, The Exorcist speaks to me of courage. And courage is a word that's literally related to the French word that means heart. So courage is about the heart.
Whereas watching The Heretic, if you take The Heretic seriously, if you go with an open mind, and maybe especially if you watch Boorman and the Devil first, you should come out of it feeling good because it literally ends with two characters walking off into the sunset together, which is very similar to the very last images in The Exorcist itself.
This is a warm film. This is a film in which children with developmental and other disabilities are being cared for by the character who was so damaged in the first movie. There are a lot of grace notes in this film.
And yeah, I'm gonna use—yeah, grace is the right word.
Grace is the right word. And Boorman and the Devil is a really good documentary about an artist's work.
Jett (19:41.269)
Well, you know, it's interesting that you look—read the critics on this Boorman picture, and very few people actually touch upon the healing power that Linda Blair has. Because this film is full of characters who have healing powers, right?We have, say, a young James Earl Jones—young, if he's played by a different actor, you know, as a boy—has healing powers. We have—the film's bookended by a young woman who has healing powers, and Linda Blair has healing powers. She helps Dana Plato speak.
And in this way it's reminiscent of the great Sam Fuller movie The Naked Kiss, in which you have someone that's very damaged, the protagonist of The Naked Kiss, and then she works with children that have problems.
And then we see these very, very touching components of The Heretic. But it's understandable it's overshadowed, again, like I said, because people were expecting a sequel.
And then you have scenes—you know, at one point the film becomes, all of a sudden, you think you walked into the wrong theater or hit the wrong button on Netflix or Hulu and you're watching—
Gareth (20:18.432)
Hmm.Gareth (20:23.472)
Mm-hmm.Jett (20:39.448)
—the great Zucker comedy Airplane! It's like, what is happening?It's a totally—I mean, I rewound one moment several times. I could swear there's a big wind machine going on in this movie that—we see Burton's wig come off. And it's like, what is—it literally is right out of Airplane!
But more importantly, you talk about putting this in the context of John Boorman's work, because you talk about the mystical element.
Gareth (20:44.656)
Yeah.Gareth (20:55.064)
Well—Jett (21:05.712)
And Boorman very famously, you know, was a young boy in World War II and saw his neighborhoods destroyed, and he and the other boys would play. They would play in the ruins of what was, you know, the day before would have been their neighbor's home or their neighbor's shop.And then he was sent away to the countryside, and then he experienced nature in its fullness and its rawness. And so out of that destruction of the urban environment, and then being immersed in nature, we have—
Gareth (21:09.284)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.Jett (21:30.92)
—this mystical sense of nature that we see in films like Excalibur, right? That we see in Deliverance and The Emerald Forest. And Zardoz.And that's part of who he is inherently as an artist, is this communion with nature.
And in The Heretic we see that not with the green, verdant fields and trees of The Emerald Forest or Excalibur, but we see it with locusts. So we see a color palette of oranges and browns and dirt.
And his films seem to want to—not penetrate into nature, but have characters that let loose of the accretion of civilization so they can commune with and become and realize that they are nature.
And I think Exorcist II: The Heretic fits right into that. And that's why it's worth seeing, especially if you like Boorman's other pictures.
Gareth (22:19.458)
Nothing more to be said. Dear listener, do yourself a favor. Give yourself a treat.Jett (22:24.436)
There's plenty more, but there's just been a knock on my door, dear listeners. I'm here at the Palace Hotel in wonderful, wonderful Silver City, and housekeeping has just knocked on my door. So I've got a—Gareth (22:32.964)
Gotta respect the housekeeper. Gotta respect the housekeeper.And do see Boorman and the Devil and see The Heretic. And let us know what you think. Let us know what you think, dear listener. We enjoy hearing from you.
Jett (22:42.888)
Yeah, they're both on streaming, folks.Jett (22:49.586)
You can always contact us at info@thefilmtalk.net, and just go to thefilmtalk.net and there'll be links to all our different platforms and all of our shows.Thanks so much for listening. I love talking with you, Gareth. It's always a pleasure.
You know what this show is? My God, I just realized it, and you alluded to this at the start. This is the synchronizer.
Gareth (22:58.852)
They do too.Gareth (23:02.712)
Mm.Synchronizer.
Ha ha.
Jett (23:09.15)
You and I are communicating—20 years of synchronization, ladies and gentlemen.Gareth (23:13.39)
Hold on. I've got the first three digits of your debit card PIN number. Can we just—no, I can't see the last one.Jett (23:22.088)
Always with the jokes.Folks, thanks for listening. I've been Jett Loe.
Gareth (23:26.498)
I've been, and I am, and I imagine I will be, Gareth Higgins, and we'll keep talking.Jett (23:34.6)
Next time.