Editorials
In Defense of ‘The Exorcist II: The Heretic’
As the 40th anniversary of the release of The Exorcist II: The Heretic arrives, it is tempting to remember the film only as a misguided sequel to a superior film that barely doubled its $14 million budget; not so impressive, compared to the over $400 million made by the original. However, the film can be a worthwhile, interesting, and possibly very fun one to the right viewer due to a few elements worthy of recognition.
First, it’s amazing that the film even exists.
Being the creative team that followed up the groundbreaking, award-winning, highly profitable original was an unenviable task. The brave soul who would take on that task had so many likely bad outcomes: being less profitable, retreading familiar ground, or even retroactively robbing the original of some of its power. It’s not a coincidence that it took 23 years to get a sequel to Psycho, and Rosemary’s Baby has never had a filmic sequel. Films of that era weren’t automatically franchised, and it was John Boorman who accepted this impossible challenge.
Second, while the film isn’t a great sequel to The Exorcist, it is a GREAT continuation of the daring career of director John Boorman. In a single decade, from 1972 to 1981, Boorman directed the backwoods terror of Deliverance, the trippy sci-fi of Zardoz, the New Age spirituality of Exorcist II: The Heretic, and the decidedly offbeat King Arthur film Excalibur. His dazzling visual style, insistence on unconventional stories, and narratives about men in spiritual and existential crises makes the second Exorcist film a perfect fit for his filmography.
Third, this movie is BONKERS (in an entertaining way)! Building off the possession in the first film, Boorman and the film’s writers somehow found a way to incorporate a complicated metaphysical plot about human evolution. He tied the Regan possession into a previous possession Father Merrin encountered in Africa, showed audiences a biofeedback machine that could put people’s brainwaves in sync.
The wacky follow-up also includes plagues of locusts, a very uncomfortable seduction sequence with Linda Blair as a succubus doppelganger, and…
… James Earl Jones, a serious and well-respected actor, dressed like this and somehow still keeping a straight face.
Fourth, The Exorcist II beat Alien by two years in changing a lead male role and recasting it for an actress. Alien cast Sigourney Weaver in a role originally written for a man in 1979; but in 1977, Boorman took the male role of Dr. Gene Tuskin and filled it with Louise Fletcher, still highly sought-after due to her Academy Award-winning turn in One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. As usual, horror and science fiction were well ahead of the curve on giving substantial lead roles to women.
And even if you hate The Exorcist II, you can probably appreciate that the excellent third film in the series, Exorcist III: Legion, only exists because novelist and screenwriter for the original film, William Peter Blatty saw Boorman’s film and thought it was laughable. Before the release of the second installment, he had no desire or concept for another entry in the series. However, he was unwilling to let the confusing and, in his eyes, unintentionally hilarious second film be the last thing movie-goers remembered about The Exorcist – so he created Legion as a book. He eventually directed the sequel film himself, which has brilliantly scary moments, the return of Jason Miller, and yet another great Brad Dourif performance.
It’s a better movie that wouldn’t exist without this one, for what it’s worth.
So in celebration of forty years of befuddlement and awkward laughs, let’s bring John Boorman’s gonzo work of art in from the cold and enjoy it for the few things it does right and the many things it does entertainingly, spectacularly wrong.
At the very least, you can’t accuse it of being conventional.
Auteur Filmmaking is a term that gets thrown around a lot these days in reference to big name directors like Quentin Tarantino and even Wes Anderson, but the truth is that film is a collective medium, and no one person can be responsible for every single aspect of a particular production. However, the smaller a film’s budget, the bigger the individual impact of every creative decision behind it – and the easier it becomes to identify a genuine auteur.
This isn’t necessarily a judgement of value, as blockbuster filmmaking comes with its own challenges and a good movie remains a miracle regardless of how big the crew is, but I’ve always been more interested in soulful b-movies produced by handfuls of passionate artists than blockbusters backed by creative armies.
That’s why I love exploring low-budget franchises that never left the hands of their original creators, as you really get to know the artists involved with these flicks and can accompany their evolution over a period of time. With that in mind, I’d like to invite readers to join me in this multi-part series as we look into a vampire saga helmed by one of the most fascinating auteurs of the 1990s. Naturally, I’m referring to Ted Nicolaou’s criminally underrated Subspecies!
The Birth of an Unlikely Horror Franchise
A proud graduate of the University of Texas’ Film program, Nicolaou got his start in the industry as a sound technician working on Tobe Hooper’s original Texas Chain Saw Massacre. From there, the filmmaker would go on to work for notorious indie producer Charles Band, the founder of both Empire Pictures and Full Moon Productions. According to Nicolaou, Band would usually contact him with an offer to direct a feature after more prominent filmmakers, such as the late, great Stuart Gordon, had already refused, meaning that his projects tended to have lower budgets and more inexperienced crew members.
The plans for Subspecies began almost immediately after the fall of Romanian dictator Nicolae Ceaușescu, with screenwriter David Pabian turning in an initial draft of the film after a Romanian producer contacted Band and explained that Romanian tax incentives could cover the cost of film production there so long as Full Moon took care of the post-production process. Since Stuart Gordon was unwilling to travel to Romania, Ted Nicolaou ended up taking over the picture.
However, while the financial incentives meant that this Romanian-American co-production could look and feel much more expensive than it really was, with Nicolaou scouting for locations in advance and selecting real castle ruins to be featured in the movie, the director was soon faced with an incredibly difficult shooting process. In interviews, Nicolaou would later describe the experience as something of a nightmare, with language barriers and the generalized distrust of capitalist outsiders sabotaging many of the team’s plans for the film.
In fact, the script, which had already been altered by Band, ultimately had portions of it rewritten by both Jack Canson and Nicolaou himself in an attempt to adapt the story to their unique limitations.
Radu Is One of Horror’s Greatest Underrated Villains
In the finished film, which was released directly to video in 1991, we follow a pair of American anthropology students, Michelle (Laura Mae Tate) and Lillian (Michelle McBride), as they reunite with their Romanian colleague Mara (Irina Movila) in her native land. The group intends to study the folklore surrounding the secluded town of Prejmer, but their research is cut short by the return of Radu Vladislas (Anders Hove) – the evil son of a vampire king (Angus Scrimm) who had previously established a truce with the region’s human residents. It’s now up to Radu’s human-loving half-brother Stefan (Michael Watson) to protect the girls from a fate worse than death as the power-hungry vampire seeks to control a magical artifact known as the Bloodstone.
Right off the bat, you may have noticed that the film’s premise sounds decidedly old-fashioned when compared to other vampire movies from around the same time. While the 1990s saw the rise of cool-looking bloodsuckers with badass elements borrowed from Westerns, as well as the sexy aristocrats of Anne Rice’s stories, Subspecies has a lot more in common with Nosferatu and the Hammer Horror series than any of its contemporaries.
This is both a blessing and a curse, as the film falls victim to overly familiar genre tropes while also standing out as a rare example of a ’90s vampire flick that isn’t afraid to flex its muscles as a Creature Feature. In fact, I’d argue that the presence of age-old clichés is a small price to pay when confronted with one of the most compelling vampire antagonists in all of cinema.
Named after Vlad the Impaler’s real-life brother, Anders Hove’s Radu is such a fascinating character and the main reason why Subspecies is still worth watching 35 years later. From his animalistic mannerisms to the joy he feels in simply existing as a chaotic creature of the night, and that’s not even mentioning the iconic makeup that almost certainly inspired the undead from Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Radu is a hypnotic presence harkening back to a time when audiences didn’t mind purely evil villains that couldn’t be redeemed through tragic backstories or sex appeal.
Gothic Atmosphere on an Indie Budget
Of course, the film’s Romanian setting and authentic art direction do a lot of the heavy lifting whenever Radu isn’t around. From the masked festivals of the village to the visually interesting selection of local extras, Subspecies’ multicultural elements help it to stand out when compared to similar flicks from the ’90s.
That being said, Nicolaou’s unique eye for special effects and exciting action sequences – as well as Vlad Paunescu’s excellent cinematography – make the movie a delight for fans of expressionist cinema and old-timey gothic horror. While the crew is obviously dealing with limited resources, many of the flick’s blemishes (such as the odd stop-motion demons that serve Radu) end up feeling more like charming idiosyncrasies than actual flaws.
I’d argue that the only real issue here is pacing, as there are long stretches of film where the protagonists are simply bumbling around without realizing what’s really going on around them. Thankfully, the gorgeous visuals and surprisingly effective soundtrack usually make up for this. Besides, how can you dislike a movie where shotgun shells are loaded with rosary beads and our lead vampires duke it out in a dramatic swordfight that would feel out of place during the golden age of Hollywood?
Your overall enjoyment of Subspecies will mostly depend on whether or not you find low-budget corner-cutting and janky practical effects charming rather than distracting, but I know I’ll keep coming back to this Full Moon feature again and again in the future.
That being said, while this first movie is worth revisiting by its own merits as the birth of an indie horror icon, I’d like to invite you to join us as we look into the cult sequel Bloodstone: Subspecies II soon.
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