Boorman and the Devil Movie Review: Follywood

I love it when somebody or something inspires me to revisit a movie I thought I’d never want to see again. Case in point: Boorman and the Devil, David Kittredge’s documentary about John Boorman’s Exorcist II: The Heretic. I saw the movie as a kid, remember little about it, and never cared to go back.

Until now.

Kittredge’s film intrigued me. Was there more to Boorman’s movie, I wondered, than I first appreciated?

Here’s what I know.

Warner Bros. gave Boorman serious booty to follow up one of the most revered horror films ever made. Yet Boorman wasn’t a huge fan of The Exorcist. He admired its technique but considered its treatment of a child’s suffering sadistic and exploitative. So rather than give the people what they wanted (more of what made the original a smash), he made the Exorcist he thought should exist—a sequel in name only. The result? A silly, occasionally spellbinding fairy tale that seemed determined to give audiences everything they didn’t want. And nearly 50 years later, Boorman still considers it some of his finest work.

Kittredge speaks with several of the people who made the film. Some still seem hard-pressed to reckon with what happened. Louise Fletcher and Linda Blair recall the production fondly and candidly. (Fletcher makes for a hell of an honest interview.) What’s refreshing is that nobody seems interested in rehabilitating the film’s reputation. Several crew members regard the experience with bemusement and pride, and between their recollections and the reviews that savaged the film, a somewhat affecting truth emerges: a movie can be made with passion, intelligence, and considerable craft and still suck.

It can break your heart. But that’s life.

My one critique is that, as a documentary, Boorman and the Devil isn’t devilish enough. Kittredge is good at getting his subjects to open up, but the familiar mix of interviews, archival footage, clips, and animation suggests a lavish Blu-ray special feature. A damned good one, yes, and one I devoured. Still, I wanted more. I wanted a documentary with something of the adventurous, lunatic spirit of the film it examines. A more mischievous look at how such a folly happened. Nevertheless, two hours with the people who made this notorious ‘70s flop, along with critics who remain fascinated by it, is right up my alley.

What does it say about contemporary cinema that a fairly conventional documentary about a bold failure from the Movie Brats era seems more invigorating than much of what comes out of Hollywood now? Boorman and the Devil recalls a time when the big studios were willing to gamble fortunes on gifted directors left largely alone to do their own thing. Sometimes those gambles produced masterpieces. Sometimes they shat out a gilded pumpkin like Exorcist II. But at least the town gambled that way. And it’s rare to see a documentary that affectionately takes a stick to one of the era’s biggest cinematic fiascos.

I wish Kittredge had made a more idiosyncratic documentary, but it made me want to rewatch a film I’d long since dismissed. And that’s saying something.