inconguity of the parts

This is a very inventive movie. Problem may be that it's too inventive. It tries to be many different movies simultaneously. It opens as a goofy horror comedy set in surreal gothic castle in the dim mists of never-never land, then intermittently becomes a Kafka-esque psychological investigation drama before becoming a teenage-targeted martial arts demonstration with John Wayne overtones. Next comes the Jesus-analogy climax with a ponderous sacrificial redemption which generates a psychoanalytical miracle and, finally, a flood-of-sunshine feelgood epilogue. The inconguity of the parts of this cinematic circus was amplified by all of them being heroically overdone, making the whole much less than the sum of its parts.

The first 45 minutes of this movie are brilliant and near perfect. You really don't know who is sane and who is not, or what sanity is after all. But after that, it lapses into a more conventional style and becomes predictable and hokey. Cutshaw's theological doubts and Kane's answers are both sophmoric and shallow. And the final scene is unforgivably cheesy in every way. Blatty certainly had cinematic talent to come up with that movie and the beginning of this one, but he never got to develop it fully.

Blatty obviously wants to explore the existence of God in the world--as he has in The Exorcist and The Exorcist 3. However, in this film he serves up a self-indulgent MASH rip-off wherein a comatose Stacey Keach serves as psychotherapist to a bunch of mentally traumatized soldiers. This is one of those movies that views symptoms of mental illness as consisting mostly of glib shtick and funny costumes (a soldier marches in swim fins and carries a beach pail, another is trying to stage a production of Shakespeare with dogs--has Blatty ever been to Belleview? Real lunatics are about as cute as cracked asphalt). Blatty is obviously trying for the irreverent, biting lunacy of the movie MASH (itself, not a logical platform for a theological enquiry, but whatever), but given the fact that even the TV series MASH was stale when this film was released, one wonders why. In the end, his story and conclusions are callow and you'll probably be hoping the "lovably goofy" soldiers face a firing squad (they don't). There's really no payoff here--no profound answers or explorations, and a lot of very bad acting. The atmosphere is spooky for no good reason as Blatty had no intention of making a horror film. Believe me, you can skip this and watch "The Exorcist" again (or any one of a half-dozen better theological movies).


"Without mercy, a man is not a human being." Sansho the Bailiff, 1954