chiller blog

Posted Feb 22, 10 02:45 PM

Great Moments, Bad Movies...Bad Moments, Great Movies: The Exorcist III

Back in my undergrad days, a fellow film student drew together an underground quarterly newsletter to keep tabs - and jabs - with cohorts.

A couple were jackasses, including that googly doofus in the buckaroo hat who voted Star Wars one of the 25 Greatest Films of All Time. Yeah, that'll pack in the credibility. A couple were pseudo-intellectual jackasses, the kind of self-martyred proletariat bore eternally mulling in front of espresso bars bowing down to D.W. Griffith and his racist The Birth of a Nation while slamming any studio picture as bourgeoisie (You try using "bourgeoisie" in a sentence these days. I keep half-expecting fish stew).

And a couple - thank gourd --- were cool. Not sheep, these eyes, brains, and hearts had their own specific opinions, not pre-held sentiments picked up from a lecture, textbook or Rex Reed. These people comprised the essence of Film Canon - "The Voice of Generation X."

Each issue featured polls, reports, more polls, remarkable essays and none-but-your-mama-cares essays. Always opting for something fresh, I ran a series of columns that relished overlooked moments - sometimes split seconds - of genius in panned-to-mixed pics while calling out the armor chinks in celebrated fare. Great Moments, Bad Movies…Bad Moments, Great Movies was born.

Honestly, who didn't cringe in Dances With Wolves when Kevin Costner received his post assignment? Remember his crazy superior, that gluttonous drunkard who wets himself, then puts a gun to his own head and intones, "The king is dead." Just terrible. And how about the cloying constellations blathering on and on about Jimmy Stewart's trials in It's a Wonderful Life? If I want sap, I'll go to Vermont.

On the other hand, enticing can be less-successful titles that have fallen by the wayside, such as the oddly-greenlit Jane Fonda-Kristofferson global financial Armageddon thriller Rollover (1981). Spoiler alert: The climax, incredibly, delivers on its premise by showing us - ahead of its time - international full-throttle bank failures. The Green Berets (1968) - John Wayne's offensively jingoistic simplification of the Vietnam Conflict - is one of the most pitiful films I've ever seen…but, hey, that title song is catchy.

You get the idea. For some time, I've been considering scene analysis for Chilled 2 The Core. But the very term "scene analysis" smacks of podiums, overhead projectors and mothballed professor types. So let's illuminate.

The Exorcist III (1990) - initially subtitled "Legion" Oscar-winning author William Peter Blatty's source novel - was actually slanted by the studio into more of a sequel than Blatty had intended. Reshoots, a lost alternative opening and the additional reprise casting of Jason Miller all played into an offshoot story thread about the resurfacing of a long-dead murderer dubbed the Gemini Killer. No reference therein was made to the incomprehensible Exorcist II: The Heretic (1977), largely regarded as the worst sequel of all time. Blatty was not involved, and ads for III clarified "from the creator of the original Exorcist." Star George C. Scott (who's stellar) confided that he signed on because it was the lone script to scare him as he read it.

After a cold opening - goaded by an ad campaign that taunted "Do You Dare Walk These Steps Again?" - III often bogs down despite a scattering of effective terror pieces. The devil reveals himself midway through in an asylum and, it turns out, is really a crashing bore. Horror and suspense succeed on tone, not talkiness, suggestion rather than show. Metaphysical debates between protagonists and villains, no matter how well constructed on the page, simply don't translate compellingly on camera (see both the Renny Harlin and Paul Schrader versions of the prequel, released separately between 2004 and 2005).

What makes this particular Great Moment, Bad Movie even more intriguing is a singular scene constructed along one long master, with two simple POV shots plus an additional pair of camera set-ups. Dialogue is sparse, and there's a lone rush of a music cue. Had the entire film's tone been an offshoot of this raw genre approach, III could've possibly risen to the jugular-jangling level of the Friedkin first (although Blatty's sequel certainly has a growing cult of fervent admirers). As is, the film oh-so-quietly contributed what time shall reveal - I predict - as one of horror's greatest scares: the Nurses Station Scene.

Here's the setup: Lieutenant Kinderman (Scott, inheriting the Lee J. Cobb role) investigates a series of unspeakable slayings that share unmistakable parallels to the Gemini Killer, who died in the electric chair the very night as the events of The Exorcist fifteen years ago. A catatonic amnesiac was found roaming the streets of Georgetown; he would end up in Cell 11 of the psychiatric hospital where Kinderman's investigation leads. And one night, after Kinderman's visit, this happens (cue 5:06-9:25).

Ingeniously simple, and the key is this: It's played out in real time (give or take a few protracted beats for tension). Imagine how un-visceral this would be recut to flashy editing. If there's ever a type of movie that could benefit from a return to its roots, it's horror - although the solid technique on display in Paranormal Activity is a glorious throwback embrace. If genre filmmakers truly want to succeed in scaring us, they have to understand how to build the tension on perfect display here.

Note the church-evoking art direction. The long hospital corridor's set design is akin to the pillars and curves of the opening sequence in the cathedral. The ceiling features a dome light source and polished floors. Even the soundtrack is hushed as if in similar sanctity, where the few things we hear include shoes echoing against tile, doors opening and closing, keys drawn and turning, ice melting in a glass. What little dialogue there is shares a dismissive pew-to-pew chatter. It is merely a brush with human contact that temporarily assures us - except for that outburst of a false alarm in the first room.

Blatty further retreats his camera into the harsh shadows and adds an unjustified blue light source as a red herring to compete with the only other color in his long shot lens: that attention-drawing red sweater jacket on Nurse Keating (Tracy Thorne). Characters will move through the different planes of the shot - always slower than a viewer beg! And the few different camera positions have subtle shifts in color tone and temperature, slightly - and only mometarily - warming up a scene best served cold.

The final zoom and volume-on music surge is genius, patiently and expertly earned. The shot suddenly thrusts us toward a violently unimaginable end that - to its credit - is left to our minds, aesthetically, respectfully and, above all, indelibly.

It's one of the greatest scenes ever achieved in horror.