lookingland

so, being on a roll and deciding there was no way i'd rather spend my saturday evening than watching a bad movie twice, i ran to blockbuster and rented (for free)* the theatrical release version of The Exorcist: The Beginning (note different title).

first, i have to justify myself for watching these movies. yes, i know they're silly. no, horror movies don't bother me (some are very well made, though it's rare). but i mentioned in my previous post that, as a writer who has priest characters, it's important to me to see how priests and the Church are portrayed in film and literature. it's rare enough you see a priest as protagonist, let alone as "hero" and that's something the Exorcist franchise has always done (i give 'em points for that).

aside from the religious justifications, students of film should have to watch these two movies back to back. it's a real education ~ for writers aspiring for hollywood as well ~ or if you just want to study plot pacing and reveal techniques. aside from a few general establishing shots and a very basic premise (lost priest unconvers buried church, unleashes the devil), these are two completely different films, made in completely different styles.

some notable improvements in the theatrical release:

1. it's just a better film all around. not only in terms of how it's shot, but with regard to genre-appropriateness (it's supposed to be a horror film after all and the other version wasn't the least bit scary), better acting (the replacement of Rachel with Sarah was a big improvement), and overall mood and theme consistency.

2. the sets (which i forgot to mention earlier in the first one) were much better lit and much better dressed. the church looked less like romper room and more spooky, cobwebby, etc. (doesn't excuse ravens flying around inside of it when it's supposed to have been sealed up for 1500 years, but oh well). the characters are much more dirty. francis's cassock is appropriately dusty and everyone is sweaty. they look like they're in africa, not at the beach.

3. speaking of francis's cassock, they fix the costuming weirdness. francis wears practical duds to the dig, but otherwise we always see him in his cassock. unfortunately they also reduced the character to no more than a minor support role (so that he can run in and say such brilliant things as: did you see that? and: what happened?). see more below.

4. much more effective use of the opening nazi scenario. took something good and turned it into something excellent. the pathos with the little girl and her rolling dog was especially brilliant. nothing gets your audience worked up more than a cute little dutch girl and her toy being blown to smithereens by a nazi.

5. the new script salvaged most of the best lines and tried to do a better job of showing merrin's confusion and reconversion. i thought his line "the Church is a leaky vessel, but she's all we have" was nicely nuanced (even if it sort of came out of nowhere ~ it's not the Church's fault he left it, after all).

6. a much more appropriate, spooky, churchy chanting score. honestly, i have no idea what was up with the last film's techno weirdness.

some disappointments:

in spite of the overall better effect of the film (more suspense, buckets more gore, more action, etc.), the film still failed on several levels.

1. eliminated the character of Cheche, the crippled boy. this was an interesting character with interesting ramifications and could have been used effectively in the rewrite, but they decided to just get rid of him. it would be interesting to know why (i could speculate, but i'll leave it alone).

2. may as well have eliminated father francis. given that francis was the most interesting thing in the first version, it was disappointing to see how uninteresting he was (in spite of mr. pullings!) in this version. he had no plot of his own and died much less interestingly (and we didn't really care because his character was so flat anyway). oddly enough i watched the interviews on the "special features" and the character mr. pullings describes himself as playing in the movie is really francis from the original version, not the character he wound up playing at all. boo.

3. the british army vs. the natives was somewhat better handled in this film, though explained poorly, i think. major granville was handled about equally bad in both versions. guess there just wasn't much they could do with all that.

4. no Jomo killing the children ~ fallout of having eliminated francis's role as missionary (and turning him into a semi-convoluted Vatican spy ~ some lame twist that doesn't add much to anything). interesting that the best things about the original version were what were cut. not sure of the wisdom of that.

somewhere between these two films was a good script and could have been a really fine movie. unfortunately it just didn't happen. i agree with hollywood that they should have never given the script to schrader. it's enormously clear from his version (the first one) that he had no clue whatsoever what he was doing.

it would have been interesting to be a fly on the wall in those production meetings and seen what was said about the original and then peek in on the writer who was brought in to overhaul the thing and get a sense of how they went about re-adapting the first script (the original script writers are listed as: "story by" in the theatrical release version).

it's too bad that when hollywood went ahead and took a second shot at it they only improved it enough to make it a mediocre horror flick and not something really worthy of all the hoopla. given the cursed nature of the production (the death of frankenheimer, the car accident that nearly took out the third director, actors falling out like flies, and other problems that plagued the set), it's amazing they finished the film at all (let alone twice).

i have a feeling they won't be doing it again.