Steven Seighman
Problematic film shoots are common in Hollywood; with so many moving parts, disaster can feel inevitable. Yet because they’re the rule, not the exception, disastrous productions rarely make headlines. Every so often, though, one implodes so spectacularly that it becomes legend.
Apocalypse Now, The Island of Doctor Moreau, and Fitzcarraldo, to name just a few, haunted their directors’ careers and became such cautionary tales they eventually got their own documentaries. Now, David Kittredge’s Boorman and the Devil joins the pantheon of doomed-film docs. But it does far more than just catalog the carnage. The documentary is a study on how ego and business—and a bit of bad luck—conspire to sink something that should have been a home run: The Exorcist II: The Heretic.
On paper, a sequel to 1973’s The Exorcist seems like an obvious cash machine. The original was a phenomenon that earned more revenue for Warner Brothers than anything they’d released prior. Linda Blair was back. John Boorman, fresh off an Oscar nomination for Deliverance, was at the helm. Every ingredient for success was in place. So, what happened? The answer is simple: the director wanted to make something else entirely from the first film, and he had the clout to do exactly that.
Boorman’s résumé at that moment was perfect for a franchise director. Catch Us If You Can (1965) was a forgettable Hard Day’s Night knockoff starring the Dave Clark Five, but it showed Boorman’s competence. 1967’s Point Blank, a stylish, nonlinear revenge thriller starring Lee Marvin, revealed ambition and visual sophistication. Then came Deliverance (1972), a backwoods nightmare starring Jon Voight and Burt Reynolds, which earned three Oscar nominations, including nods for Best Picture and Best Director. By 1973, Boorman was now in Hollywood’s upper echelon. So when Warner Brothers offered him The Exorcist, it was easy for him to say no. And “no,” he said.
Boorman turned down what would become a defining moment in horror cinema to make Zardoz, a film so catastrophically weird that it’s become a cultural joke. The film is nothing short of a fever dream, featuring a mustachioed, ponytailed Sean Connery in what amounts to a red diaper. It’s absurd and aimless—and it totally tanked at the box office. But despite its poor performance, the film was viewed as a success by Boorman because, in that case, he’d been able to make exactly the movie he’d wanted to make. The Exorcist sequel would be his undoing precisely because of this—his effort to do that once again.
The director accepted the Exorcist II assignment under the condition that he would forgo rehashing the original story, opting instead for a metaphysical meditation on trauma and faith—anchored by scenes involving African rituals and countless supernatural locusts. Warner Brothers was too invested by then to say no. The result angered audiences, bewildered critics, and became such a monumental failure that it nearly derailed the careers of both Boorman and Linda Blair.
The makers of Boorman and the Devil could have easily mocked The Exorcist II. Instead, director Kittredge delivered a thoughtful and unbiased examination of the decisions that led to this disaster. Through interviews with cast and crew, we see a group of people genuinely committed to making the best film they possibly could and a director who refused to sacrifice his artistic vision. In the end, everyone involved paid a price, including—and maybe especially—the audience.
Boorman and the Devil ultimately asks the question: is it better to enact your vision and fail spectacularly or to understand your audience and succeed commercially? With The Exorcist II, Boorman clearly chose the former. Whether or not he learned his lesson remains to be seen—the documentary leaves that somewhat ambiguous. But that’s what makes John Boorman such a fascinating character, and why it seems like the film’s curse might actually have been on him.
