The Devil Can Cite Blatty For His Own Purposes

Year: 1990

Director: William Peter Blatty

Cast: George C. Scott, Ed Flanders, Brad Dourif

Run Time: 1 hour 50 minutes

MPAA Rating: R

The telling thing about The Exorcist III is that even though it’s creatively compromised, it’s also a course correction for the franchise. That’s how much Exorcist II: The Heretic was a massive supernova disaster. Directed by original Exorcist author William Peter Blatty and adapted from his novel Legion, The Exorcist III has run the gamut between being unfairly ignored and inappositely exalted. Now that we’ve arrived at this stop on our tour through the franchise, it’s time for ol’ Brennan to set the record straight.

No movie is as good or as bad as anybody thinks it is. You can take that to the bank.

The Exorcist III follows to aged characters from the original film: Lieutenant Kinderman (George C. Scott), the detective who investigated Regan’s murder of a film director in 1973 – Spoilers? I guess. Look, you made it this far. – and Father Dyer (Ed Flanders, hi diddly ho), who was a close friend of young exorcist Father Karras (Jason Miller). The pair are now longtime friends, but Kinderman is being troubled by a rash of ritualistic killings that have broken out, imitating the exact M. O. of the Gemini Killer, who was executed 15 years ago.

Kinderman’s investigation leads him to a hospital where Dyer has recently been bedridden. As more people begin dying, his suspicion grows for a mysterious patient in the isolation ward (Brad Dourif), who seems to him to be the very spitting image of Father Karras…

At least in the theatrical cut.

You may have noticed (or probably didn’t, because you have better things to think about) that The Exorcist III is actually a direct sequel to the NOVEL The Exorcist rather than the movie itself, continuing a relationship between Kinderman and Dyer that was in no way established in Friedkin’s film. This is one of many ways Blatty attempts to reassert his vision of the franchise, an impulse that would see him butting heads with the studio at every turn. His novel Legion is vastly different from the story of the MacNeils, and the studio pressure to link the two films is an oppressive presence over the film.

The fact that Exorcist III intermittently succeeds speaks to the strength of his core ideas, because the flick is stuck between a rock and a hard place. Not only was the studio being its usual bullheaded self, the truth is that Blatty really isn’t a very good filmmaker. He manages to craft some reasonably iconic scares here, but he frequently mistakes silence for tension. The most famous sequence in the movie comes at the tail end of a seven minute static shot that allegedly crates a rising sense of dread, but is so poorly framed and sedately performed that the boredom muffles the horror.

And the man has never been able to adapt his own novels. As we saw in the screenplay he wrote for The Exorcist, he has a tendency to abandon important details from the source material, resuting in a stunted narrative arc that leaves the audience behind in the proverbial dust. This problem gets even worse here, because his delightfully loony idea is that The Exorcist III is a theological murder mystery. More police procedural than horror film for the bulk of its runtime, this movie would be a fascinating turn for the franchise if it weren’t for one thing: most of the clues Kinderman uses to solve the crime aren’t actually in the script. That would be like Sherlock Holmes revealing that he knew the whole time that the killer had a key to the room but never mentioned it until the end.

Or if Twin Peaks waited five episodes to even tell you that Laura Palmer was dead.

But in spite of all this, The Exorcist III has an unusual amount of power for a third film in a franchise. The nightmare imagery at play here is so disjointed (one dream sequence features a young Samuel L. Jackson and a cameo by Fabio – how’s that for eerie?) and the offscreen killings so viciously macabre, the film musters enough tingle to keep the spine occupied.

Plus, the movie has a secret weapon. Although the film brags about the return of Jason Miller (a late addition in reshoots, added to increase the link to the original film and play with Kinderman’s perception of the incarcerated killer), his role is only occasionally plastered over the man’s true face. That true face belongs to Brad Dourif, best known for playing the psycho doll Chucky. But here he displays not one drop of the acid sense of humor of the Child’s Play franchise. 

No, Dourif’s Gemini killer is a literal demon walking the earth in human form- possession be damned. He is so downright terrifying in this role, with his callous voice slaloming through an unpredictable flurry of rage and calm, that I’m surprised he wasn’t considered for the next year’s Silence of the Lambs. He makes the entire movie without ever getting up from his cot! I’m almost certain that Heath Ledger had this film on a loop while he was preparing for the role of The Joker. It’s a tour de force of horror movie performance, one that argues against the Oscars ignoring the genre every year.

A dude from The Godfather Part III was nominated for Best Supporting Actor that year. You’re telling me we couldn’t have slipped a little Dourif in there?

With Dourif on board, this film could never be considered bad, and I suppose it helps that the dialogue is actually clever and engaging. The ending does devolve into a goody, studio-mandated exorcism that’s so shoehorned in, it requires a character who has no connection with the plot to suddenly teleport into the hospital with no provocation. There’s literally no way he could have known what was happening, unless he had Jean Grey psychic powers.

He doesn’t even go here!

After a bit of lovely deus ex machina (and, to be fair, isn’t that quite literally how all exorcism movies end?), the film quietly expires, blowing away like dust in the wind. It’s no classic sequel, but it’s good enough to till be in the conversation all these years later, even if the best thing about it is that it’s not Exorcist II.

TL;DR: The Exorcist III is a decent horror/crime-thriller, even if it highlights William Peter Blatty's weaknesses as a filmmaker.

Rating: 6/10

Word Count: 1091

Reviews In This Series
The Exorcist (Friedkin, 1973)
Exorcist II: The Heretic (Boorman, 1977)
The Exorcist III (Blatty, 1990)
Exorcist: The Beginning (Harlin, 2004)
Dominion: Prequel to The Exorcist (Schrader, 2005)

Life Finds A Way

Year: 1993

Director: Steven Spielberg

Cast: Sam Neill, Laura Dern, Jeff Goldblum

Run Time: 2 hours 7 minutes

MPAA Rating: PG-13

This review is an epic adventure two years in the making. You see, back when I was first starting my blog in 2013, it was right around the time that Jurassic Park was re-released in theaters in 3D. During that time, I was still using my training wheels. I was still transitioning from my cruddy, Tumblr-based format, and it would be a couple months before I made the kamikaze commitment to pen a review of every movie I watched.

Unfortunately, a lot fell through the cracks, though it did lead to some very strange and insightful articles that are far from disappointing. Anyway, this all comes back to me sitting in that dark theater, re-experiencing Jurassic Park for the first time since childhood on the big screen. All big, puffed-up talk about Spielberg and popcorn blockbusters and the rise of the film school generation aside, that is the kind of experience that you can’t fail to be profoundly affected by. You wanna know why? I’m just gonna say it, professionalism be damned: Jurassic Park is freaking awesome. And I’m sorry I didn’t find the time to review this back then.

Yes, it has a brain in its head, yes, it’s marvelously composed and shot, and yes, the computer imagery is revolutionary, but before we get down to brass tacks, let’s take a moment to step back and look at the big picture that those tacks are pinning up.

Jurassic Park is freaking awesome.

Of course, Jurassic Park has the audacity to open straight onto its very worst scene: A tragically silly raptor attack littered with an uncomfortable profusion of extreme close-ups of mouths. But the effect of that front-loading means that it’s only uphill from there, and between this scene and the film’s grand finale, that slope is like Mount Frickin’ Everest.

When the movie settles down into its plot proper, we learn several things. John Hammond (Richard Attenborough) is a man with a dream. And a bank account that would make Donald Trump weep tears of liquid gold. His life’s ambition is to create an unforgettable theme park populated with live, cloned dinosaurs on the South American island Isla Nubar. When his investors demand a thorough inspection of the site before opening it to the public, they call in prominent mathematician Ian Malcolm (Jeff Goldblum). 

For his defense, Hammond brings in famed archaeologist Alan Grant (Sam Neill) and his wife/girlfriend/general long-term commitment person, the paleobotanist Ellie Sattler (Laura Dern). To his dismay, his guests don’t want to play on his elaborately-designed rides, rather preferring to marvel at the science behind the cloning and discuss just how dubious an idea it is to toss kids onto an island with a herd of hungry velociraptors.

Right on cue, Hammond’s grandchildren – Tim (Joseph Mazzello) and Lex Murphy (Ariana Richards) arrive. Together with the inspection team, they set out on a jeep tour of the park that goes horribly wrong when a bit of subterfuge by disgruntled employee Dennis Nedrey (wayne Knight – Hello, Newman) causes the gates to malfunction, setting the ravenous dinos on the rampage. Dr. Grant finds himself stranded with the kids and, in the process of escorting the little buggers across the island, begins to shake his firm resolve against ever having one, because Steven Spielberg.

Also, Laura Dern could teach Bryce Dallas Howard a thing or two about sensible footwear in survival situations.

At its core, Jurassic Park is an astounding act of creation. Combining top dollar animatronic effects supervised by SFX superstar Stan Winston with an extremely clever, tastefully discreet use of nascent CGI technology, Jurassic Park brings prehistoric mayhem to impossible life. Computer graphics were about as sophisticated as a Nintendo game back in 1993, but by using them to augment brilliant practical effects and disguising the biggest deficiencies beneath the cover of night, the film holds up mind-bogglingly well. The dinosaurs here have weight and autonomy bestowed upon them thanks to the tender, loving care of the filmmakers, making Jurassic World’s collection of pixels look like a kids’ cartoon. 

Jurassic Park is ultimately a celebration of what technology can achieve* when it’s applied with some good, old-fashioned elbow grease. And that’s the thing about the film that makes it such an enduring classic: Yes, it’s an enormous popcorn spectacle, but the showstopping effects are generously ladled over what is already a terrifically solid film qua films.

*Ironically, the story is staunchly anti-science, but that’s more Michael Crichton’s fault than anything.

I would say that the movie would be just as good without the dinosaurs, but even I know that would be going at least a smidge too far.

Beneath the wondrous layer of dino mayhem, Jurassic Park is an appallingly clever film. The subtext (which is largely about chaos theory and how any manmade attempts to alter the course of nature are bound to go horribly wrong) manifests itself in a variety of subtle, layered ways, many of which are achieved with the help of ace cinematographer Dean Cundey (who also did Halloween and everything else that matters). In moments like a computerized DNA pattern being projected onto the rough, scaly skin of a hunting velociraptor, or the billowing “when Dinosaurs Ruled the Earth” banner that flutters from above a roaring T-Rex, Jurassic Park is both rapturously beautiful and visually inventive.

And this rampant creativity doesn’t just stop at frame composition. The film’s action sequences are among the best ever committed to celluloid, ranging from the unbearably tense (the raptors in the kitchen), the heroically cool (the jeep crashing down the cliff face), and the intoxicatingly intense (the kids fighting to keep the jeep’s glass ceiling between them and the T-Rex’s slavering jaws). All this cinematic carnage is peppered with instantly iconic shots that any movie producer would sell their left lung just to have one of, pushed over the edge with bombastic glee by John Williams’ brassy, epic score.

After all this time, we’re still trying to break through the glass ceiling.

Now here’s the part where the imperfections hiding in the shadows come out to pounce now that our guard is down. This was a film made in the early 90’s after all, and the only unquestionably perfect thing to come out of that entire period is me. As such, Jurassic Park hails from the early days of home computers, in which thriller directors found endless captivation in lavishly depicting people clicking through blocky filed systems.

But there’s one thing that betrays the film’s 1993 vintage above all else…

Hold onto your butts.

That’s right, Samuel L. Jackson is cast as the resident computer nerd. Pulp Fiction was a year away, so nobody could quite figure out what to do with him. This is mystifying, but it’s also a good segue into the acting, another unfortunate victim of the stranglehold of the 90’s. Along with a slate of malnourished characters that are more broad strokes than nuance, there are wild peaks and valleys in the film's overall performance quality. Attenborough, Dern, and – shockingly – Knight make it through without a scratch, but Sam Neill is a little too puffed-up, the kids are a little too shrill and wheedling, and I hate to admit it, but I’ve never uh… been um- a huge fan of –uh… Jeff Goldblum.

I appreciate that his acting style emulates the natural processes and rhythms by which actual real people formulate their speech. I really do. But if I had a nickel for every godforsaken syllable he uses to infinitely prolong his (admittedly well-crafted) dialogue, I’d make more than his entire salary. Plus residuals.

But aside from these slight speed bumps, Jurassic Park is and will always remain an indefatigable classic of popcorn cinema. It’s a superbly crafted work of art with a beating human heart hidden beneath its shining, high-tech exterior. And, after my next entry in this marathon, we’ll find out once and for all if quality blockbusters do move in herds.

TL;DR: Jurassic Park is an epic, delightful popcorn adventure.

Rating: 9/10

Word Count: 1359
Reviews In This Series
Jurassic Park (Spielberg, 1993)
The Lost World: Jurassic Park (Spielberg, 1997)
Jurassic Park III (Johnston, 2001)
Jurassic World (Trevorrow, 2015)
Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom (Bayona, 2018)

The Chavs And The Chav-Nots

Year: 2015

Director: Matthew Vaughn

Cast: Taron Egerton, Colin Firth, Samuel L. Jackson

Run Time: 2 hours 9 minutes

MPAA Rating: R

Comic book movies are getting stale. Don't get me wrong, I dug Avengers 2 and Guardians of the Galaxy. But let's be honest. Do we need a third Spider-Man reboot? Do we need another sarcastic superhero fighting someone who has developed powers exactly the same but slightly stronger than his? 

Luckily we have Matthew Vaughn. Love him or hate him, he has a talent for making some of the more interesting comic adaptations scattered around the movie landscape. His style is rigorously anti-mainstream, full of blood and guts and a kind of ruthless energy that has been lost amid a litany of Iron Man sequels. But enough about superheroes. Kingsman: The Secret Service is a goddamn spy comic book movie and it is awesome.

And contrary to popular belief, no, it is not a sequel to The King's Speech.

Kingsman tells the story of young Eggsy (Taron Egerton), a thuggish British teen growing up in poverty. His father was a member of a secret spy agency known as the Kingsmen, the modern knights of the round table. When he is referred to this organization via Galahad (Colin Firth), he begins his training with a group of posh candidates who look down on him for his social status.

But when it becomes clear that the American tech mogul Valentine (Samuel L. Jackson) is going to use his ubiquitous technology to cull the Earth's population (ie. all the people not rich or noble enough to "deserve" life) with a frequency that turns people into insatiable, violent rage beasts, Eggsy might just be the only one noble, clever, and strong enough to defeat him.

Only the pure of heart and pure of ab are worthy to wield the sword of the Kingsmen.

The story is very been-there-done-that and Kingsman knows it. Its more meta moments are a bit weak and pandering, but as a pastiche of the greatest spies from James Bond to Jack Bauer, it's aces. It's zanily kinetic, no-holds-barred fun. 

Whether it's a girl with metal legs that can cut through a man like a knife through water, driving backwards through heavy British traffic, or a cavalcade of super cool gadgets (the likes of which have hardly been seen since the early Bond days), Kingsman ups the ante on the typical spy movie clichés, turning up the gas at every turn.

In typical Vaughn fashion, the action is a little more blood-soaked than the typical spy movies, especially those before the glorious rise of the 1980's. But never fear! Though the available grue is more than enough to satisfy the cravings of grotesquely depraved gorehounds like myself, it's also toned down enough to be palatable to all but the weakest stomachs. Basically, if you can handle putting a Hello Kitty Band-Aid on your cut, you can handle this movie. 

...More or less. There is one sequence where even I found the violence to be excessive, actually crossing the line between "over the top" and "maybe we should consider lowering the top." But save for that one slip-up, the violence is nothing less than a comic-fueled bonanza of excruciatingly cool spy combat.

Baby, let your colors burst.

In addition to its exuberant action, the Kingsman has a surprisingly refined funny bone. Samuel L. Jackson is perhaps given the best material (concerning his character's distaste for violence), but Egerton absolutely owns a thuggish role that inhabits a world of unintentional comedy. However, the biggest surprise in the film is Colin Firth, who displays a side of himself that's never been seen before, shifting effortlessly between being perilously genteel and a hard-edged lightning bolt.

Underneath it all, Kingsman  even has something to say! I mean, how lucky are we? Like a disconcerting amount of 2015 films, its main villain makes a convincing argument on the back of the devastation of global warming, and the bulk of the story addresses the indecent class disparity that affects everyone in our society, whether we like it or not. 

The Kingsmen is an organization with noble blood, purportedly seeking to preserve the safety of the people. But the fact remains that these supposed knights balk when it is suggested that a commoner join their team. In its way, Kingsman shows that an endless search for money and status makes us fallible, no matter how noble our goals. I shan't go into too much detail on this, for fear of spoiling the third act, but rest assured that Kingsman is highly politicized, and whether you agree with it or not, it's reassuring to see genre filmmaking returning to a place of intelligence and promoting conversation.

Just look at the class disparity! Colin Firth can't even afford a dope-ass hat.

That said, Kingsman is not perfect. For one, its approach to women tries hard not to be demeaning, but only occasionally succeeds. Two strong female characters become warped and twisted beyond hope: one is shuttled off to the side to flail meaningfully but uselessly on the sidelines, and the other is turned into a twisted gorgon, a hyperbolically sexual stereotype that is just plain embarrassing no matter what side of the glass ceiling you're on.

And I prefer to be on this side, thank you very much.

But all in all, Kingsman: The Secret Service is just plain fun. With the perfect cast, a manically charming director, and a great deal of high-octane action stuffed in to taste, it's a thrilling romp through the spy genre from a modern perspective. Go seek it out if you haven't yet. Not all February releases are crap, as it turns out.

TL;DR: Kingsman: The Secret Service is a thrilling and clever modern spin on the classic spy adventure genre.
Rating: 8/10
Word Count: 972