The riddle of the locust is that the locust is strong, but steel is stronger, so says (I wish) African locust shaman James Earle Jones in Exorcist II: The Heretic (1977). It is my unofficial recommendation for this weekend, depending on your state of pan-dimensional inebriation and yen for Italian-style nightmare logic. Mine is stronger, and the riddle of steel, asked by Jones' Stygian serpent shaman in Conan, is it turns out answered a mere six years earlier, in a delirium tremens hallucination of alcoholic Welsh booze shaman (i.e. Catholic priest) Richard Burton. Such is the way timeless/spaceless spirit worlds are run, into the ground and then beyond. And Jones is the shaman in the locust helmet. And the shaman in the serpent headdress, and whatever else ya got.
But before getting involved too deep, know this: Richard Burton is the heretic of the title--he and he alon. It's another one of his priest roles but he's a long way from the Iguanas and the Sandpipers. He's down to the locusts, and whatever else creeps deep below even they.
This towering actor and booze-fume djinn was once, twice, three times. probably more, a priest in film (not even counting his stint as the pedophile-shielding Bishop of Canterbury in Beckett). A weird thing for a drunkard A-list actor to be cast as, a priest. Nine times out of ten, priests are depicted in film as boring old fogeys pooh-poohing, browbeating, boring, and benumbing everyone in earshot. Then again, Burton hungover is just like that: surly, sullen, cranky, sanctimonious, trading on his collar to excuse his rudeness, hiding his forgetfulness of lines and blocking via sweaty reticence.
In short, Burton in Exorcist II: The Heretic (1977) is a mess. Whether that's the character or Burton being a latent alcoholic (honey, I recognize all the symptoms), it hardly matters.
In short, Burton in Exorcist II: The Heretic (1977) is a mess. Whether that's the character or Burton being a latent alcoholic (honey, I recognize all the symptoms), it hardly matters.
But he's still a pro. He will make you wonder once more the age-young question: can a panicky Welsh alcoholic towerer priest touch a demon Tinker Belle locust wing and fly fly fly to Africa or/and into the arms of a demonic, sexy Linda Blair, believably? Or if not, will there be at least some campy hoots to be had?
Not even. You need to applaud like hell to bring this turning-green fairy back to life, and even then, all it does is crawl woozily along, wings soggy from being dragged through the highball glass condensation rings, Don's "vicious circles."
And yet... fall approaches and doomsday December, and the bleakness of each SAG member gone to ember turns one's heart to demon mentors, and as it's on the Netflix streaming, why not give Exorcist: the Heretic (1977) another chance?
Not even. You need to applaud like hell to bring this turning-green fairy back to life, and even then, all it does is crawl woozily along, wings soggy from being dragged through the highball glass condensation rings, Don's "vicious circles."
And yet... fall approaches and doomsday December, and the bleakness of each SAG member gone to ember turns one's heart to demon mentors, and as it's on the Netflix streaming, why not give Exorcist: the Heretic (1977) another chance?
Boorman's movies are complicated attempts to be genuinely mythic and Jungian-masculine archetypal. Even the worst of his weird wonders are worth giving a second, third, even a sixth chance to. (PS - I finally like Zardoz after only 10 tries!)
Me, I tried myself to watch Heretic only once, years ago, but never got past that first mind-boggling stretch wherein Burton first watches Louise Fletcher hypnotize Regan so she can go back in time to the events in her bedroom during the climax of the last film (he 'needs' to find out how Father Karras died); then Regan hypnotizes Fletcher (while still hypnotized herself) so she can join her there, in the past, then Fletcher--in real time--starts gasping in pain, because Pazuzu is clawing at her beating heart, in the past. So Burton tells Regan (still under the influence, mind you) to hypnotize him so he can go back and rescue Fletcher, as if pulling some Dreamscape/Inception-style invasion is as easy as wearing a biorhythm feedback headband and staring into a flashing light for two seconds. As Fletcher says, "slow your tone!"
Back in time, meanwhile, back in the original film's time (1973), Regan's Pazuzu devil make-up is being worn by a different actress, who's massaging Fletcher's naked heart. As Fletcher gasps and chokes and 'arghs'... over and over and over... Pazuzu/Regan stares at the newly arrived Burton with a lewd obscene grin, wanting him to draw a breast squeezing parallel. Burton watches the scene from across the table, horrified, staring into Pazuzu's evil licentious eyes
Minute-after-minute passes....moaning... lewd staring.... shocked paralysis... moaning... staring....
Fletcher begs Burton to do something, anything to help.... the massaging continues. Pazuzu/Regan, massaging Fletcher's exposed heart, stares lewdly at him, STILL squeezing her heart as if fondling her breast, bidding him with her eyes to make it a macabre trans-dimensional threesome.
Finally, after the moment plays on so long you think the editor must have fallen asleep, Burton croaks "in God's name," with nary a shred of holy conviction, and that's the end - Pazuzu fades away.
In God's name indeed.
I, like so many before me with some idea of how hypnotism and holy powder--I mean power--actually works, and slowing of tones, stopped watching then and there. Regan, turn it off! In God's name!
There's one Italian Exorcist knock-off in particular I'm thinking of, for it too mixes ESP, astral travel, mysterious shamans, and North African scenery. Lucio Fulci's oddly titled 1982 film Manhattan Baby (2) involves a mysterious amulet given by a mysterious old lady to a young tourist girl named Susie (Brigitta Boccoli) visiting Egypt with her parents, right around the same time her papa (Italian genre favorite Christopher Connelly) finds a mysterious secret panel in an old tomb that takes him face-to-face with a similar jewel embedded in a wall - which zaps him in the eyes, blinding him. Susie takes the jewel home to their Manhattan apartment--never telling the parents--or presumably customs--what she got--and things begin to happen. Evil things! Back in NYC, she and her brother (blonde moppet mainstay Giovanni Frezza) are soon 'voyaging' to Egypt via portals opened up in their bedroom by the jewel, coming back with weird Anubis figurines and tracking sand all over their room. Meanwhile, people in NYC who help the parents find answers wind up dead via animal attacks or mysterious elevator accidents. In short, Baby fills in the gaps left in the original Exorcist's parallel stories, The Omen, and of course Ride with the Devil, and Rosemary's Baby (the arcane knowledge taxidermist is named Adrian Mercato--you do the math). It addresses the issues that Heretic never even mentions, namely why/how Father Merrin's archeological dig n Iraq is responsible for Regan's possession in DC. Is there a dimensional doorway involved between Iraq and the District of Columbia, as there is here between Manhattan and Egypt thanks to this same mysterious gem? (see Acidemic Journal of Film and Media #3, 2007 - The Exorcist in Iraq). All I know is, Pazuzu tries that shit in Brooklyn, he'll get his face bit off, and/or no one will even notice.
On thing that's especially cool is the unspoken generation gap: the kids don't bother to tell their parents anything about their travels--they try once and are just snapped at for lying. So the kids spend the bulk of their time with their au pair (Cynzia du Ponti). It's both frustrating and hilarious that the Egyptologist dad never once notices the amulet he's been searching for all his life, the twin to the one that blinded him, is right there around his daughter's neck. It's an ironic comment on paying attention to what's right in front of you and a reminder that, in the 70s, kids roamed free like wild animals. The parents do their thing--bridge, wife-swapping, cocktails, golf--and the kids do theirs--traversing ghostly doorway to an Egyptian temple, murdering irritating chuckleheads and staring mutely into space--and everyone minds their own business. Except the birds. Even stuffed with sawdust, the birds can attack. In Fulci-ville, not one eyeball is safe.
Fabio Frizzi's music has a great habit of mimicking the screams and other sounds in the film so you can't easily tell which is which (Fulci without Frizzi would be like Sergio without Ennio) and I like especially the huge fuzzy lack of line between what's intentional and what's accidental. When du Ponti's screaming face is alternated with shots of a cobra slithering around on an indoor floor, they never occupy the same shot: is she seeing the cobra, is it in some alternate dimension, is it menacing the kids, waiting on the other side of the locked door she's trying get into or none of the above? We never find out And when mom (Laura Lenzi!) walks into the kids' room to find her missing pet douchebag from work, is there really a sandy desert on the floor, was it an arial shot of the desert merged with the carpet, or just well-done sand and is Lenzi really touching it?
If these questions were to be answered, I'd love Manhattan Baby slightly less. I can't even remember how it ends and I saw it only hours ago, and that's not a dis. Either way, it's not gratuitous, is more or less okay for children aside from the gory attacks, and it zips along merrily; almost experimental in its disjoined image connection at time, somehow it will help you sleep and make Heretic seem like Citizen Kane. And I don't mean that as a dis either.
Me, I tried myself to watch Heretic only once, years ago, but never got past that first mind-boggling stretch wherein Burton first watches Louise Fletcher hypnotize Regan so she can go back in time to the events in her bedroom during the climax of the last film (he 'needs' to find out how Father Karras died); then Regan hypnotizes Fletcher (while still hypnotized herself) so she can join her there, in the past, then Fletcher--in real time--starts gasping in pain, because Pazuzu is clawing at her beating heart, in the past. So Burton tells Regan (still under the influence, mind you) to hypnotize him so he can go back and rescue Fletcher, as if pulling some Dreamscape/Inception-style invasion is as easy as wearing a biorhythm feedback headband and staring into a flashing light for two seconds. As Fletcher says, "slow your tone!"
Back in time, meanwhile, back in the original film's time (1973), Regan's Pazuzu devil make-up is being worn by a different actress, who's massaging Fletcher's naked heart. As Fletcher gasps and chokes and 'arghs'... over and over and over... Pazuzu/Regan stares at the newly arrived Burton with a lewd obscene grin, wanting him to draw a breast squeezing parallel. Burton watches the scene from across the table, horrified, staring into Pazuzu's evil licentious eyes
Minute-after-minute passes....moaning... lewd staring.... shocked paralysis... moaning... staring....
Fletcher begs Burton to do something, anything to help.... the massaging continues. Pazuzu/Regan, massaging Fletcher's exposed heart, stares lewdly at him, STILL squeezing her heart as if fondling her breast, bidding him with her eyes to make it a macabre trans-dimensional threesome.
Finally, after the moment plays on so long you think the editor must have fallen asleep, Burton croaks "in God's name," with nary a shred of holy conviction, and that's the end - Pazuzu fades away.
In God's name indeed.
I, like so many before me with some idea of how hypnotism and holy powder--I mean power--actually works, and slowing of tones, stopped watching then and there. Regan, turn it off! In God's name!
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But last night I held on all the way, maybe because since that first disastrous attempt I've seen a lot more 70s Italian horror films, and had my own alcoholic battle with the devil, and--most importantly--I've fallen under the demonic sway of ace composer Ennio Morricone. I didn't even know he scored Heretic until his unique Italian soap opera on acid creepiness started around midway through the picture, almost as a reward for my patience. I didn't even have to check the credits. A minute of that score and I knew things were about to get awesome. It's like Ennio watched and waited til the parents and wallies left the party before he busted out his stash. I don't think there's even any music before then, so when it comes it's like a paycheck for our labor. Maybe it's just because he's so affiliated with 70s Italian horror, but Morricone's score triggers a weird glaze of surrealism and tolerance, allowing we fans of weird Italian movies to see what some critics might dub 'stupidity' but is really dream logic. With Morricone's help perhaps one day y'all can learn to experience Heretic as I just finally did, not as an official sequel to the original Exorcist but as an Italian rip-off. And on that level, it's an instant faux classic. Just pretend all the lines are dubbed, and that you're tripping with Richard Pryor (1) at a New York City grindhouse. The bliss will follow. |
There's one Italian Exorcist knock-off in particular I'm thinking of, for it too mixes ESP, astral travel, mysterious shamans, and North African scenery. Lucio Fulci's oddly titled 1982 film Manhattan Baby (2) involves a mysterious amulet given by a mysterious old lady to a young tourist girl named Susie (Brigitta Boccoli) visiting Egypt with her parents, right around the same time her papa (Italian genre favorite Christopher Connelly) finds a mysterious secret panel in an old tomb that takes him face-to-face with a similar jewel embedded in a wall - which zaps him in the eyes, blinding him. Susie takes the jewel home to their Manhattan apartment--never telling the parents--or presumably customs--what she got--and things begin to happen. Evil things! Back in NYC, she and her brother (blonde moppet mainstay Giovanni Frezza) are soon 'voyaging' to Egypt via portals opened up in their bedroom by the jewel, coming back with weird Anubis figurines and tracking sand all over their room. Meanwhile, people in NYC who help the parents find answers wind up dead via animal attacks or mysterious elevator accidents. In short, Baby fills in the gaps left in the original Exorcist's parallel stories, The Omen, and of course Ride with the Devil, and Rosemary's Baby (the arcane knowledge taxidermist is named Adrian Mercato--you do the math). It addresses the issues that Heretic never even mentions, namely why/how Father Merrin's archeological dig n Iraq is responsible for Regan's possession in DC. Is there a dimensional doorway involved between Iraq and the District of Columbia, as there is here between Manhattan and Egypt thanks to this same mysterious gem? (see Acidemic Journal of Film and Media #3, 2007 - The Exorcist in Iraq). All I know is, Pazuzu tries that shit in Brooklyn, he'll get his face bit off, and/or no one will even notice.
Fabio Frizzi's music has a great habit of mimicking the screams and other sounds in the film so you can't easily tell which is which (Fulci without Frizzi would be like Sergio without Ennio) and I like especially the huge fuzzy lack of line between what's intentional and what's accidental. When du Ponti's screaming face is alternated with shots of a cobra slithering around on an indoor floor, they never occupy the same shot: is she seeing the cobra, is it in some alternate dimension, is it menacing the kids, waiting on the other side of the locked door she's trying get into or none of the above? We never find out And when mom (Laura Lenzi!) walks into the kids' room to find her missing pet douchebag from work, is there really a sandy desert on the floor, was it an arial shot of the desert merged with the carpet, or just well-done sand and is Lenzi really touching it? If these questions were to be answered, I'd love Manhattan Baby slightly less. I can't even remember how it ends and I saw it only hours ago, and that's not a dis. Either way, it's not gratuitous, is more or less okay for children aside from the gory attacks, and it zips along merrily; almost experimental in its disjoined image connection at time, somehow it will help you sleep and make Heretic seem like Citizen Kane. And I don't mean that as a dis either.
Let's now bring this chain back to the beloved James Earle Jones as a Dr. Benway-esque African etymologist dealing with locust plagues (top and below), a man who is simultaneously both a trippy locust-shaman and a sober scientist working on ways to stop the swarms that regularly wipe out crops all across his native continent. I kept hoping he'd give Burton a flask of yellow bug powder so he could go around knocking on doors shouting "Exterminator!" and zapping Pazuzu's locust buddies even as his priestly collar turns into a black locust with a patch of white on its forehead, calling him "Dick" in a gravelly anus voice. But you can't have everything. At least it's easier to believe Jones is a multi-dimensional locust shaman than it is to believe Burton's a priest or that anyone in this film is ever really in Africa instead of just looking around behind or in front of a lot of miniatures and mattes. I like that aspect too, though. If you've ever had a fever or done psychedelics or read any Phillip K. Dick then you know that simultaneous multi-dimensional existence is doable, and the world does look like terrarium miniatures once your senses are unmoored from normal space/time, and for awhile Jones makes it all seem cohesive. The way he effortlessly grasps Burton's lost, mangy situation on both fronts at the same time is pretty tripped out, and the highlight of the film.
Still waiting....
As the hours fritter by, his shakes commence. We can measure the time in his wild eyes, feel him feeling locusts under his skin. Or to paraphrase a reverend he played in Night of the Iguana, "That's when the spook moves in." Burton at least got some opiate tea in that film, something to ease him off the ledge during his proto-intervention, but he's pretty cut off in Heretic, and as the shakes come he tries to pass them off as holy madness, seizing his one chance at a diegetic libation by greedily gulping down a proffered goblet of sacramental wine, which he only gets after he's climbed atop the holy cliff in Africa during some sacred locust-defying ritual. But as any alcoholic knows, one mere slam of wine when suffering booze withdrawal is only allaying the shakes by a half hour, tops. Lucky for Burton, he gets stoned (literally) by the locals before heading back home down the cliff (every suffering alcoholic longs for unconsciousness). Later he starts abusing Blair, feebly shoving her against a wall over and over in a futile attempt to kill her --death by feeble shoving! It's one of the most embarrassing displays of Satanic possession in cinema. Finally he succumbs to delirium tremens, and "locusts" start swarming all around him. Richard, Richard... Richard... there are no locusts, they're not DT hallucinations! Or did you cause them somehow, hallucinate them into space/time existence?
Why couldn't you have stopped at a liquor store, Dick? Dick be not proud.
You got money... not like poor Don Birnim, stuck with his bat and his mouse and his empty bottles.
You can even trace the progress of his disease over the course of the film, which functions as a fine gauge of alcohol withdrawal symptoms, as well as holy 'stations' since booze withdrawal is not unlike crucifixion, as I can personally attest.
The 7 Stations of a Dry Burton
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| Station 1: Early morning Hangover (coasting on fumes) |
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| Station 2: Mounting dread (preliminary withdrawal) |
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| Station 3: Panic (shakes) |
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| Station 4: Brief Reprieve (sacrament)
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So forget about logic. Forget about comparing the sequel to the original, just appreciate the dark, fuzzy, muted cinematography of William Fraker (Rosemary's Baby), turn up the Morricone and pretend it's Fulci's wing that's touching you instead of Boorman's. I don't know about you, but it took me forever to love Zardoz too. And lastly, look at the shots below and see if you can guess, which ones are from Fulci's Manhattan Baby and which from Exorcist 2.
The answer... may surprise you!
NOTES;
NOTES:
1. "White man take acid. White man take acid and goes see the Exorcist" -SNL season 1 monologue
2. It should have been called Parsley's, Thyme's or Sage's Baby to not confuse us, though it would anyway since Rosemary's Baby was set in Manhattan as well
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| Answers:Heretic - 2, 4, 6, 8, 12, 13 / Manhattan- 1, 3, 5, 7, 9, 10, 11 |
NOTES;
See also my 10/09 piece Bad Acid 70s-80s, Part III: Drive-In Dream Logic, Italian-style!
NOTES:
1. "White man take acid. White man take acid and goes see the Exorcist" -SNL season 1 monologue
2. It should have been called Parsley's, Thyme's or Sage's Baby to not confuse us, though it would anyway since Rosemary's Baby was set in Manhattan as well
Personally I adored Exorcist II. You're right in saying that there's no point in trying to make sense of it. Just sit back and enjoy the weidness.
ReplyDeleteThe power of Linda Blair compels me to rip all her clothes off and perform literally every concievable and possible sex-act in the known universe on that amazing little lust-pot (as the bird was in 1977 when the bird was 18, not as the bird is now obviously).
ReplyDelete