Horror in the 90s: 'The Exorcist 3'

The Exorcist 3 (1990)

Directed by William Peter Blatty

Written by William Peter Blatty

Starring George C. Scott, Brad Dourif, Scott Wilson, Nicol Williamson

Release Date August 17th, 1990

Box Office $44 million

People forget just how big a hit The Exorcist 3 was when it was released in August of 1990. Author William Peter Blatty's first and only directorial effort managed to top the box office on opening weekend and accumulated an overall box office gross that would be over $100 million dollars today. Despite much negative reaction to the film at the time, The Exorcist 3 has persisted in the minds of horror fans as an unforgettable cult oddity.

The Exorcist 3 centers on a Police Detective, Lt. William F. Kinderman, played by legendary actor George C. Scott. Kinderman recalls having been at the scene of the crime when in 1975 Father Damian Karras (Jason Miller) plunged to his death from the apartment window of young Regan MacNeil after having participated in Regan's exorcism. It's a horrific memory that Kinderman shares with Father Karras' close friend, Father Joseph Dyer (Ed Flanders). And it's a memory that creeps back into both men's minds when a series of murders occur that recall a demonically possessed killer.

In 2020, The Exorcist 3 turned 30 years old and on my podcast, the Everyone's a Critic Movie Review Podcast, we watched it and reviewed it on the show. Our review was incredibly positive. We loved George C. Scott's performance and the wild horror imagery of William Peter Blatty's shabby but endearing first time direction. Watching the film again, a mere 3 years later however, the charm is less pronounced. What steps forward are the flaws, the strange choices, the reasons the normies of 1990 hated this movie.

It's sad but it appears to be true that I willed myself to like The Exorcist 3 so much in 2020 that I neglected just how weird and random William Peter Blatty's choices are. First of all, one of the first images of The Exorcist 3 is a jarringly silly shot that is intended to be frightening. Church doors fly open, and an ill-wind blows through the church, creating a chaotic swirl of loose hymnals and biblical verses. The camera slides into the chaos before cutting to a close up of a cross where a ceramic Jesus of Nazareth comically opens his eyes. The image of Jesus here looks like comedian Tom Kenny and the horror spell that Blatty is trying to cast fails immediately.

This is followed by an attempt to give The Exorcist 3 the feel of a waking nightmare. The camera leaves the church and takes on a first person perspective, as if we are the camera and we are in the midst of a dream. We are walking down a wet street late at night. In the distance, a man who appears to be wearing a Priest's garb runs quickly and strangely across the street. The camera moves up and down with each step, the camera, our eyes, fall upon the sidewalk before us. A young man appears to the left of the frame holding a rose. We walk past him and continue up the street. The young man emerges again somehow having teleported to a spot ahead of us. He holds out the flower and we walk past.

We then leap to a new location, the steps from Georgetown below the former home of Regan MacNeil. It's the place where Father Karras died after leaping from a high window. We, the camera, roll down those stairs just as Father Karras did, rolling and bouncing horrifically until we reach the bottom, and there the nightmare ends. We awaken to helicopters intercut with scenes from inside of a church. Our protagonists, Lt. Kinderman and Father Dyer going about their business. Kinderman is investigating a grisly murder scene. Father Dyer is practicing a sermon and scolding a student priest, played in a cameo by a very young, almost unrecognizable, Kevin Corrigan, a favorite character of mine.

The visual marriage of Lt. Kinderman and Father Dyer is accompanied by dialogue that establishes the long-time friendship of these two men. It's a friendship bound in the blood of their dead friend Father Karras. It's established in dialogue that each man is haunted by this date, the date of Father Karras's death. They are haunted so much that they each feel the need to comfort the other. Each man talks of having to cheer up their old friend and thus they meet at a local movie theater for an umpteenth showing of It's a Wonderful Life.

One can infer that Blatty is intending to evoke the life-affirming emotional power of It's a Wonderful Life to underline how these two men appreciate being alive. Other than that, it's a particularly random inclusion. The movie date is followed by a bizarre non-sequitur conversation in which the detective relates a story about why he doesn't want to go him to his wife and mother-in-law. It's a story about a fish currently occupying Kinderman's bathtub and how he hasn't had a bath in 3 days because the fish is there. This is the pretense Blatty feels is necessary to get Kinderman and Dyer to have dinner together and rehash stories about Father Karras and Kinderman's strange new murder case.

Not to be Mr. IMDB trivia, but, as we cut to the restaurant in the following scene, there is an entirely random and uncommented upon cameo from a famous non-actor. Glimpsed ever so briefly in this scene is the former United States Surgeon General, C. Everett Koop. Most won't recognize the man but if you are of a certain age, his oddly styled beard, a style referred to as a chinstrap, as it circles the face without including a mustache, is a strangely familiar sight. Koop became famous in the late 80s and early 90s when he defied the Reagan and Bush administrations to openly discuss AIDS. He spoke of safe sex and promoted condoms at a time when it was not something conservatives wanted him to do.

That's a wordy way of saying that spotting C. Everett Koop in a brief cameo in The Exorcist 3 is weird and quite distracting for someone who knows who he is. Perhaps the former Surgeon General was invited because he shared a prominent Letter C with star George C. Scott. These are the kinds of bizarre intrusive thoughts that such random inclusions invite. And they are a warning to future filmmakers, try to minimize such distracting cameos in your movie as they might pull focus from what you are trying to accomplish in a scene.

We are barely more than 15 minutes into The Exorcist 3 and the random assortment of insanities has only begun. After we see C. Everett Koop and a wild Larry King cameo, we return to our main characters having a debate over the existence of God and why, if there is a God, does death exist. In this moment of lament, George C. Scott delivers a monologue about the murder that he is currently investigating that is batshit crazy. Lt. Kinderman has given up his belief in God long ago but this case involving the gruesome murder of a young black man, has truly sealed his atheism.

According to Kinderman, the boy was murdered by having 'Ingots' driven into the eyes of his severed head. Ingots, for those that don't know, are small bars of either gold or silver. The victim had been crucified on a pair of boat oars and in place of his severed head was that of the head of Christ, perhaps the Christ from the earlier dream sequence. Only this Christ's eyes were closed. The Jesus head was also painted up like a minstrel show character called 'Mr. Bones.' All of this is to communicate to Father Dyer that a God cannot possibly exist if this kind of horror can be inflicted on the innocent.

That said, you need a full set of encyclopedias to follow the various things that George C. Scott's detective refers to in this scene. From 'Ingots' to 'Mr. Bones' to a reference to what he calls ;Mongoloid Babies,' that's babies born with Down Syndrome, I needed to have Google open to follow this massive train of thought, stream of consciousness that Scott delivers here. Now, imagine trying to follow these references in 1990. It's a string of complete insanity that, while you can contextualize it toward Kinderman's point about the absence of God, it still comes off as completely nuts.

Here again, Blatty is over-egging the pudding. Scott's mad tale of murder is deeply, distractingly weird. The over-arching point is that the manner of death is reminiscent of a famously deranged serial killer. But the whole ingots, Mr. Bones, boat oar crucifixion, is an entirely unnecessary detail. Colorful? Absolutely. Memorable? Definitely. Distractingly odd and laughably over-wrought? Completely. I love how George C. Scott relates these bizarre details, but they have no place in this or any movie that isn't going to center these wild details in any way beyond this conversation.

The wildly inane weirdness never ceases in The Exorcist 3. After an effective set piece in which a priest is brutally murdered inside a confessional, we return to Father Dyer and Lt. Kinderman. The good father is in the hospital for some kind of routine check up. Kinderman comes to see him and the two bicker like an old married couple until the scene is interrupted by a nurse who Kinderman screams at in a manner not befitting the moment. He appears like a mental patient, but he tells Dyer that he's just tired. Throughout the scene, Father Dyer is flipping through a copy of Women's Wear Daily and marveling over the stuffed penguin that Kinderman brought him.

You could infer that the stuffed penguin is a reference to some sort of inside joke between Dyer and Kinderman but, because we have no context for it, it's just very, very odd. Men of this age bringing each other stuffed penguins is the kind of detail that just doesn't need to be here. It's odd and humorous but why is it here? I am amused by it as a puzzling but endearing aspect of Dyer and Kinderman's friendship dynamic but once again we are left distracted by Blatty's deep dedication to minutiae that only makes sense to him.

The ever-mounting insanity of The Exorcist 3 persists to a dream sequence that is one of the most jaw droppingly odd things ever brought to the screen. In the span of a mere two minutes, we see well known model Fabio, a young Samuel L. Jackson as a blind man, little people carrying a clock, and New York Knicks basketball star Patrick Ewing as an angel reading tarot cards to Father Dyer. The dream is that of Lt. Kinderman who has been greeted in this dream by the boy who was crucified, his head now crudely reattached as he waits in heaven's waiting room. The boy welcomes Lt. Kinderman who says "I'm sorry your dead Thomas" in the kindest, most sincere way, no horror, just a bit of sadness. It's soooo weird!

I know dreams are meant to be strange and often non-sequitur in nature but this is truly a cursed series of images. What in the Wide World of Sports is going on here? Why did William Peter Blatty think to himself as he wrote this screenplay that he needed Fabio and Patrick Ewing? Why are there little people carrying a large clock? There are other bizarre sights including strange looking women playing piano, a dead big band, seemingly led by a Glenn Miller lookalike, cutting the atmosphere with a jaunty tune, and much more base insanity far too inane to catalog. But why? Why is any of this in this movie? We haven't even reached into the main plot of The Exorcist 3 which will somehow resurrect Father Karras, once again played by Jason Miller.

This is just part of my review of The Exorcist 3 which will be in my book, Horror in the 90s. It's a book I want to write but cannot complete without your help. If you'd like to help make this book a reality, a book featuring nearly 200 pieces on horror movies released in the 1990s, a look back at the stars, the tropes and the strangeness of horror in the 1990s, then consider making a donation here via Vocal. You can support the book by making a monthly pledge on Vocal or by leaving a one-time tip via Vocal Tipping.

If you'd like to see more of the book, you can see what I have already published including pieces on Henry Portrait of a Serial Killer, The First Power, Tales from the Crypt The Movie, and Brain Dead, on my Vocal Profile. Some are full length reviews and others are more of a stream of consciousness riff on the oddity of one or more aspects of these unusual and fascinating genre films. It seems that even bad horror in the 1990s contained an element that made them memorable and its been fun and exciting looking back on these movies. I want to do more but I can only do that with your support.