CAN WE REPRESS THE MEMORY OF THIS MOVIE?

It’s the most hated sequel ever, but is it time to reconsider The Exorcist II: The Heretic?

At Cinema Dirtbag we believe there is no such thing as a bad movie. There are cheap ones. There are shallow and expensive ones. There are movies that make no sense, or are too personal in meaning for the creator to allow an audience in. But being born of the most grinding art process devised on Earth, every completed and released film is a miracle, proof that human cooperation is possible and that there is cinematic light in all of us.

This faith was shaken by 1977’s The Exorcist II: The Heretic.

We weren’t surprised by that. That the Exorcist sequel was both the most expensive film ever made at the time and a total disaster is part of film lore. So much so a documentary, Boorman and the Devil, is doing the festival rounds this season to ask audiences to reconsider one of the most disliked films in history. It screens next at the Brooklyn Horror Film Festival on October 22nd.

Since neither of us had ever seen the sequel we decided to start our Halloween watches with it.

Heretic is less a…