Your mother sucks cocks in hell. So I've heard anyway, but I don't believe everything I hear on the big screen. It's all made up, scurrilous nonsense, scripted by men in smoky rooms with overactive imaginations, who try to make us believe that dinosaurs can return after millions of years, that aliens may invade our homes and cities, that flocks of birds may suddenly turn against us, that zombies will walk the earth and force us to hide in shopping malls. And they're good at it, too, but by the time the credits roll we know it's all just entertainment, designed by writers and special effects boffins to give us some cheap thrills, make us jump and hopefully cop off with the opposite sex on the back row.

But there are those films which have gone beyond those parameters, and stayed with us past the confines of the movie theatre to invade our bedrooms, basements and shower cubicles. Psycho can probably claim to have been the first, having forever disrupted the bathing habits of millions of terrified women. Jaws prompted previously carefree swimmers to get the hell out of the water, suddenly aware that below them could lurk an oversized mechanical beast with a penchant for using human legs as toothpicks. But there can surely be no film to have made such a deep impact on an audiences consciousness as William Friedkin's The Exorcist. We all know the stories: People fleeing the cinemas in dumb struck terror, fainting and vomiting in the aisles, calling in priests to have their houses purged of evil spirits, a ludicrous 25 year video ban in the UK for fear of some kind of mass hysteria. Watching the film today, it's undeniably a powerful and entertaining experience, but its previous power has waned, probably due to today's audiences being a little less naive and suggestible than in 1972.

It was a huge success, despite the initial reservations of studio chiefs. The script was tight and literate, the effects brilliantly staged, and the acting performances from Linda Blair, Ellen Burstyn and Jason Miller were note perfect, with the icing on the cake being Mercedes McCambridge's astonishing contribution as the voice of the demon. So, with the inevitability of an aggressive tumour, the studio simply had to have a sequel. Linda Blair and Max Von Sydow were signed up with indecent haste, as was Louise Fletcher ( fresh from her acclaimed stint as Nurse Ratchet in One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest), Richard Burton ( fresh from the nearest pub ), and, with Deliverance director John Boorman at the helm, what could go possibly go wrong?

Cue the premiere: Audience boos and laughter, things thrown at the screen, and unanimous howls of critical derision. Such was the negative reception that Boorman quickly pulled the film after opening night, and re-cut it, hoping to salvage something from the wreckage. It didn't help. It was literally laughed off the screen, became a spectacular box office bomb, and has gone down in history as one of the most misguided and downright awful films of all time. Of course, any sequel to a classic movie like The Exorcist was going to have its work cut out for it, and the film probably had three strikes against it before it hit the theatres.

That said though, this really is a stinker. From the performances of the cast to the woefully convoluted and ridiculous script, it completely ignores the genius craftsmanship and masterful direction of the first movie, and instead zooms off into preposterous flights of total fantasy and histrionic lunacy. There are moments in this film where you will find yourself staring open mouthed and speechless at the sheer badness of the whole thing, and if you're not watching alone, you will frequently turn to your companions and say things like, "What the f*cking hell is going on?" You will see a once-great actor saying lines like "You've got to fight that demon that's inside her! It's preventing her from reaching full spiritual power!". You will hear James Earl Jones solemnly intone, "If Pazuzu comes for you I will spit a leopard". When the credits roll, you will have considered it an insult to your backside that it was made to sit there through such pointless and nonsensical garbage.

So, what is this movie all about then? Well, to be honest, I don't think that anyone involved in the production of this crap knew what the hell it was about either, but here goes. Four years on from the events of the first movie, Regan Macneil ( a considerably bustier Linda Blair ) is living in the big city with her nanny and undergoing therapy at what is presumably the Institute For The Recently Possessed from Dr. Jean Tuskin ( Louise Fletcher, looking thoroughly embarrassed ). Her therapy consists of strapping on a headband connected to a machine called a "synchronizer". The therapist also does this, and doctor and patient are required to stare at two spotlight things and listen to an annoying beeping noise, which allows their subconciousnesses to synch up together in a kind of mind meld. Confused? By Christ, you will be. For this machine is utter nonsense, completely fictional, and the whole movie depends on it.

Enter Father Lamont ( Burton, looking like he's spent the last ten years at the bottom of a whisky bottle ), who has been assigned to investigate the suspicious death of Father Merrin in the first movie, and find out if one of his hobbies was to engage in a spot of devil worship. Upon meeting ( and, frankly, leering at ) Regan, he decides to take part in one of these therapy sessions, whereupon he sees visions of Regan's possession and Merrin's death at the hands of the demon. This therapy session inexplicably almost causes Dr Tuskin to have a heart attack, and Lamont to start raving about how they're up against the forces of evil and all that guff, but doesn't tell the audience exactly what the hell is meant by all this. "Your machine has proved scientifically that there's an ancient demon inside her!" reasons Lamont in one of the movies classic lines, and so begins his quest to find out who the demon is, what it wants, and if hell has a well-stocked bar.

It transpires that Father Merrin ( Max Von Sydow, picking up a cheque for ten minutes work ) had encountered the demon Pazuzu before in the African desert, and successfully exorcised the pesky spirit from a young boy named Kokumo, who Lamont decides it's imperative to find. This he does by aimlessly wandering through some streets until someone asks him, "Are you looking for Kokumo?" Yes, really. He finds Kokumo ( James Earl Jones ) dressed like a tribal chief, and then in a head-scrambling scene worthy of David Lynch on LSD, suddenly finds himself talking to Kokumo in some laboratory which studies locusts. At this point, attempting to explain the plot of this movie becomes a pointless exercise, as seemingly any attempt at maintaining a coherent and believable narrative is abandoned for the sake of fannying around with a load of locust swarm effects, appallingly bad science and lots of metaphysical tosh.

The gist is this: There are select humans in the world who are, in effect, agents of goodness and God's will, who have the power of spiritual healing and psychic insight, and will one day unite the planet in a kind of collective conciousness which will defeat evil once and for all. Regan is one such person, as is Kokumo, which explains why the demon has made time in his day to try to possess and kill them. The ridiculousness of this idea is bad enough, but the incompetence of the execution in this film is hard to credit. Scenes are jumbled together with little cohesion and even less dramatic effect, and as a viewer you simply don't feel the presence of any evil as tangibly as you did in the first film, mainly because the demon isn't actually possessing anyone, but is instead just floating around getting on everyone's nerves.

There is fun to be had in watching an actor like Richard Burton perform his role whilst clearly rat-arsed, and much has been written about the awfulness of his appearance here. Suffice it to say that it is worth watching for sheer comedy value alone, his attempts at solemnity and gravitas both hilarious and grippingly shambolic, like watching a barfly totter on his stool and wondering when he's going to fall off. His inept mugging during one of the hypnotism scenes is one of moviedom's all-time greatest lessons in how not to act, and his tormented soul searching and pained expressions throughout can only be put down to losing his hipflask. I've not seen much with Burton in it apart from this, but I will find it difficult ever to watch another Burton movie without thinking of this and wincing.

Linda Blair, so startlingly convincing in the original, is also pretty bad, although certainly not in Burton's league and also has to cope with the fact that the cameraman was clearly in love with her. Whatever her age at the time of this movie, it is a little disconcerting that there are some distinct Lolita-esque overtones here, made explicitly clear in a distasteful scene near the movie's climax. There's no real need for it, and if Boorman was trying to make some kind of point about Regan's awakening sexuality he shouldn't have bothered, as it's a slightly disturbing distraction. Louise Fletcher is bland and unengaging, but to be fair she does look as though she knows this is a terrible film and would rather be far, far away, as does Max Von Sydow. James Earl Jones appears for about five minutes in two equally baffling roles, and Kitty Winn reprises her thankless character of Regan's nanny before meeting a laughable demise.

There are so many examples of outraegeously bad storytelling in this film it's hard to know where to start, but probably the best is a scene where Burton and Fletcher discover a fire in the institute's basement. Burton runs over to it and begins beating wildly at the flames with, of all things, a crutch, before Fletcher has the good sense to grab a large fire extinguisher from the wall. Another is the film's entire climax, which takes us back to the MacNeil house in Georgetown, and during which we are subjected to an absurd display of confusing special effects, horror cliches and a resolution so mis-handled and convoluted you'll wonder if the scriptwriters were actually suffering from some kind of mental illness. It really is that bad, and trying to describe it simply doesn't do it justice. A genuine case of "You have to see it to believe it".

Its status as one of moviedom's mightiest turkeys means that it is actually worth watching, for comedy and research value. It is a mesmerisingly gripping film experience, although not in the way it was intended. But don't be expecting a movie of any artistic merit whatsoever, despite a couple of scenes featuring some intriguing cinematography. The accepted wisdom is that 1990's highly underrated Exorcist III: Legion, directed by William Peter Blatty, is the real Exorcist sequel, being a superior psychological chiller with some shockingly effective scares - If you haven't seen it, I advise you seek it out. The Exorcist story should have ended there, but now we have Exorcist: The Beginning, which, I am reliably informed, is a satanic shambles. Exorcist 2, however, should remain unchallenged for years to come as the gold standard of hack moviemaking.

A truly crap film.

Recommended:
No

Viewing Format: DVD
Video Occasion: Good for Groups
Suitability For Children: Not suitable for Children of any age