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The Exorcist III
Original 1990 theatrical poster
Directed by	William Peter Blatty
Produced by	Carter DeHaven
Written by	William Peter Blatty
Starring	George C. Scott Brad Dourif Nicol Williamson Jason Miller Zohra Lampert
Music by	Barry Devorzon
Cinematography	Gerry Fisher
Editing by	Peter Lee Thompson Todd Ramsay
Distributed by	20th Century Fox
Release date(s)	August 17, 1990
Running time	110 min.
Language	English
Preceded by	Exorcist II: The Heretic
Followed by	Exorcist: The Beginning
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The Exorcist III (also known as The Exorcist III: Legion or Exorcist III: Legion), is a 1990 horror movie directed by William Peter Blatty and based on Blatty's novel Legion, the sequel to Blatty's original Exorcist novel. It stars George C. Scott, Nicol Williamson, Ed Flanders and Brad Dourif.

The movie is a sequel to The Exorcist and skips past many of the events of Exorcist II: The Heretic. It takes place in Georgetown fifteen years after the events of the first film, in which a young girl named Regan was possessed by a demon.

The Exorcist III is the subject of much discussion, notably because the film was drastically re-written and portions were refilmed when the studio became unhappy with the more psychological scares that writer/director William Peter Blatty had chosen in favor of head-spinning and pea soup. The fabled "lost cut" has been passionately debated by fans and film historians alike, and is the topic of an upcoming study by writer Erik Kristopher Myers[1], who's 2008 book will reveal the whole story behind the film's development, and publish never-before-seen images and interviews with Blatty, Brad Dourif, Mark Kermode, John Carpenter, and many others associated with the film.

Tagline:

• Do you dare walk these steps again?

Contents 1 Synopsis 2 Plot 2.1 The Dream 2.2 Unexplained events 2.3 The Corridor Scene 2.4 Explanation 2.5 Ending 3 Production Notes 3.1 Reshoots 4 External links

Set 15 years after the events of The Exorcist, Lieutenant Kinderman (Scott) is a philosophical police detective who was briefly involved in the case of Regan's possession. He has to investigate a string of grisly murders that appear to have a satanic motive behind them, and furthermore have all the hallmarks of a serial-murderer known as the Gemini Killer. The most baffling thing is that the Gemini Killer was executed years ago.

The evidence eventually leads Kinderman to the psychiatric ward of a mental asylum where an already disturbing case takes a shocking twist.

Although it did not match the success of the original, it is nonetheless held in slightly higher regard than Exorcist II: The Heretic. The slow pace and emphasis on dialogue in The Exorcist III is cited as a reason for both liking and loathing it by horror fans.

Basketball player Patrick Ewing and model Fabio have cameo appearances in a dream sequence, in addition to television host Larry King's appearance as himself in a restaurant. The film also includes early appearances by Angela Bassett as a nurse and Samuel L. Jackson as a blind man.

The plot summary in this article or section is too long compared to the rest of the article. Please edit the article to focus on discussing the work rather than merely reiterating the plot.

The film opens with a haunting sequence in a church, whereby the doors eventually fly open and a blast of wind sends trash spiralling through the pews. A statue of Jesus opens its eyes and gazes at the camera. The camera then takes the point-of-view of someone as they walk from the church, a voice informing us "I have dreams...of a rose...and of falling down a long flight of stairs." We then indeed see a camera shot of someone plummeting down the steps that occurred in the climax to the original movie, The Exorcist.

An abrupt jump sees us with Lieutenant Kinderman (George C. Scott) at the scene of a murder. Thomas Kintry, a twelve-year-old boy (who was seen in the dream-like sequence at the start of the movie) has been murdered.

Later, Kinderman takes his old friend, a priest named Father Joseph Dyer, out to see their mutually favorite film It's a Wonderful Life. Kinderman relates, after the film, the details of the murder of the young boy he was investigating that morning; the child had been paralyzed with succinylcholine, a muscle relaxant and then decapitated and finally had his head replaced with the head from a statue of Jesus (but made up like a minstrel, as the victim was African-American) and finally crucified.

Despite the horrific aspects to the film, there are comical overtones to the dialogue between Kinderman and Dyer, who often appear jovially hostile towards each other in only the way that long-time friends can be, such as the following conversation that invokes a light-hearted approach to the problem of immortality:

Kinderman: Would a God who is "good" invent something like death? Plainly speaking, it's a lousy idea. It's not popular, Father. It's not a winner.

Dyer: There you go, blaming God.

Kinderman: Who should I blame, Phil Rizzuto?

Dyer: You wouldn't want to live forever.

Kinderman: Yes I would.

Dyer: No you wouldn't. You'd get bored.

Kinderman: I have hobbies.

Another murder soon takes place; a priest is decapitated in a church. We see an old lady leaving the scene. Kinderman, as he did with the previous victim, checks both hands of the corpse.

Father Dyer is shortly hospitalized, although not with anything serious. He apparently has just been having dizzy spells and feels like putting his feet up.

That night, Kinderman has a strange, surreal dream of the afterlife. After seeing a music box dancer tumbling into the abyss, followed by rosary beads (foreshadowing another murder), he envisions a limbo portrayed as a hospice resembling Grand Central Terminal staffed by angels (including Fabio), with the dead (or nearly dead) awaiting transport to such places as "Therapy", "Earth", "Intensive Care", "Holding Center", "Reconstruct" and "Elsewhere", as an animatronic trio of women play on strings and piano -- and a big band orchestra plays swing tunes elsewhere in the station. One of the patients tries futilely to communicate with the conscious and living of Earth with an amateur radio:

Patient: Earth! Can you hear us? We're attempting to communicate! Come in, please!

Blind patient: (disgustedly) The living are deaf.

As Kinderman strolls through the hospice, he's greeted warmly by the first murder victim, the black boy Thomas (wearing a Police Boys Club t-shirt and his head stitched back onto his body), to whom Kinderman apologizes, "I'm so sorry you were murdered, Thomas."

He then sees Father Dyer, who, like Thomas, has stitches across his neck, being tended to by a silent black-winged Angel of Death, played by NBA star (and former Georgetown player) Patrick Ewing. Kinderman wonders aloud whether Dyer is dreaming this too. "No Bill, I'm not dreaming," replies Dyer.

The film then speeds into fast-motion, intercut with shots of Dyer being slammed against his hospital bed -- the audience learns later that his blood was being drained and the pounding was to get the extra drops out.

The next day, Father Dyer is found murdered. He was killed the night before, as implied by Kinderman's dream. Every drop of blood in his body has been drained out of him and his head severed. Written on the wall with Dyer's blood is "IT'S A WONDERFULL LIFE" (the misspelled word with two "L"'s was a trademark of the Gemini Killer.)

At each murder scene, an elderly person has been sighted, and the fingerprints at the crime scenes do not match up to previous scenes, indicating a different person committed each crime, despite the obvious similarities.

An inconsistency in the story between this and "the Exorcist" emerges early in the film as Kinderman fondly refers to Father Karras as having been his "best friend". In the original novel and film Karras and he had only become acquainted briefly through the murder investigation of Burke Dennings. Though Kinderman had invited Karras to see a film with him, Karras died before a friendship ever evolved.

In a discussion with the hospital staff, Kinderman finally relates the reason for his unease about the series of killings. Fifteen years ago, the Gemini Killer was executed; with every victim he cut off their right index finger and carved the Zodiac sign of Gemini into the palm of their left hand. Kinderman has been checking the hands of the three victims and verified that the Gemini's sign has been there. The Gemini Killer also always used an extra "L" in his notes sent to the media, such as "useful" or "careful". Furthermore, to filter out false confessions, the original Gemini Killer's true mutilations were kept a secret by the Richmond police's homicide department; the newspapers were made to wrongfully report that the left forefinger was severed and that the Gemini sign was carved on the back of the victim. In these new slayings, the correct mutilations - known only to the true (deceased) killer and the Richmond police (including Kinderman) - have been used. The only plausible solution is that the Gemini is not dead - but he was very definitely executed. Kinderman does not know what is happening and is not afraid to make this obvious to his equally perplexed colleagues.

The head of the psychiatric ward, Dr. Temple, asks to see Kinderman. Temple is very nervous, chain smoking cigarettes and shaking with terror. He relates the history of a man in Cell 11, who was found wandering aimlessly fifteen years ago with no memory of who he was. The man has been locked up since then, catatonic up until recently when he began to be violent and claim he was the Gemini Killer.

Kinderman humours Temple by going to see the patient, only to see that the patient is - at least in appearance - Damien Karras. Father Karras, in The Exorcist, let Regan's demon possess him before he killed himself by throwing himself out the window and down the steps.

Kinderman does not believe what he is seeing. The patient brags of being the Gemini Killer and taunts Kinderman by expressing ignorance over who this Father Karras is, and also boasts of killing Father Dyer, infuriating Kinderman, causing him backhandedly punch Patient X's nose, breaking it.

Stoic, self-proclaimed "bitch" Nurse Allerton (Nancy Fish) tells Kinderman as she treats his hand that "nothing is normal" about Patient X, as he often slips into a catatonia in which his EKG shows accelerated brain activity. She also mentions that Patient X had unusually spoken before twice in a "decent", "desperate" voice: "Save your servant" and "Kill it."

Kinderman leaves the hospital and goes to the Jesuit library to confirm what he suspected: "Save your servant" is a phrase from the Rite of Exorcism.

There follows a prolonged, wide-angle shot of a corridor while Nurse Amy Keating (played by Tracy Thorne, identifiable throughout the film as the only nurse who wears a red sweater over her uniform) goes about her rounds. After several minutes of uneventful silence, there is a false alarm when a sleeping patient abruptly wakes up and scares the nurse.

Silence then reigns once again and the nurse checks the other patients. A security guard who sits in the corridor is summoned by someone and leaves, falsely suggesting to the viewer that events will follow him. Instead, the camera remains fixed down the corridor as the nurse goes through the motions of checking her charges are all okay. The scene has by now lasted about one and a half minutes - a very long time.

Just as the viewer believes that nothing is happening, the camera shot zooms in on the unsuspecting nurse crossing the corridor while a mysterious figure - draped in a blanket and holding out a pair of amputation shears - strides after her, ready to slice off her head. Immediately, the film jumps to a beheaded statue of Christ. The following morning a morose Kinderman is informed that the unfortunate nurse has been found dead. She was decapitated, slit open, her intestines torn out and then her body stuffed with Catholic rosary beads.

That same morning, it is discovered that Dr. Temple, who first brought the man in Cell 11 to Kinderman's attention, is dead. He committed suicide in his office due to some unimaginable terror that was after him.

Kinderman finally goes to see the Karras look-alike in Cell 11, who still claims to be the Gemini Killer. He says that he was indeed executed but before his soul could depart it was thrust into the dying body of Father Karras. Pazuzu, the demon who possessed Regan in the first movie, was furious at being pushed out of the child's body and is exacting its revenge by putting the soul of a vicious serial killer - the Gemini Killer - into the body of Father Karras. Pazuzu was aided this time by a major devil called Legion following the orders of "The Master". Each evening, the soul of the Gemini leaves the body of Karras and possesses the elderly people with senile dementia elsewhere in the hospital and uses them to commit the murders. This explains the elderly people seen lurking around at each murder - despite them seemingly being physically and psychologically unable to commit such horrific deeds - and the different fingerprints at each crime scene. The Gemini Killer also explains that he was the one who caused Dr. Temple to commit suicide, by threatening him that he would suffer in unspeakable ways, "pain that cannot be imagined". He says essentially that Temple believed his apparent bluff (chuckling, "...the fool believed me"), but that "he couldn't take the pressure, the pressure of inimitable me". Temple had obviously chosen to end his own life painlessly instead of risking to suffer the same horrible fate that befell the previous victims. It may be notable that suicide is seen as a major sin by the church, indicating that Temple has inadvertently sent himself to hell.

The victims are associated with the events of the original movie. The first victim, the young boy, was the son of the woman who figured that the nonsense language of Regan was actually English, but backwards. The first priest to be killed recommended Karras as an exorcist and finally Father Dyer was a good friend of Karras, Karras being the one who eventually drove the demons out of Regan. The fourth victim, the nurse, did not have anything to do with the events in the original movie; the Gemini killed her because she fit in with his modus operandi of selecting victims; she was a "reward" from both Legion and Pazuzu.

Initially, Kinderman disbelieves all of this, but changes his mind when the Gemini possesses an old woman who makes a failed attempt to murder Julie, Kinderman's daughter. The attempt is thwarted at the last moment, by Kinderman's mother-in-law, who pulls Julie away from the amputation shears which the elderly patient has taken out of the bag she'd been carrying. The possessed patient now attacks Kinderman, but the attack abruptly ends when a priest, Father Paul Morning (Nicol Williamson), enters the corridor leading to cell 11 and attempts an exorcism on the patient. It goes wrong and the priest is all but slain. Kinderman arrives in time and attempts to euthanise Father Karras after finding the body of the priest, only to be hurled into the wall by the possessed Karras with what appears to be telekinetic force. The demon that possesses Karras (at this stage, it does not seem to be only the Gemini killer in Karras body, but also Pazuzu featured in the first Exorcist movie, saying it has come to "save my son, the Gemini") then asks Kinderman if he has helped him to believe. Kinderman than delivers a furious speech ("I believe in death, I believe in hate, I believe in pain, I believe in every form of ugliness...!"). Upon uttering these words, Kinderman is confronted by visions of Hell in the form of the Gemini's many victims. These shades rise from fissures that open in the floor of the cell and include Thomas Kintry's crucified, decapitated body, his head replaced with that of a Jesus statue painted in blackface. This vision is replaced by one of Karras, crying out, "Bill, save me!" Father Morning manages to briefly force the Gemini from the body of Karras. For a brief moment, the man in Cell 11 is wholly Karras, and he begs Kinderman to kill him before the Gemini can re-enter his body. Kinderman does so with his service pistol, finally killing Karras' body and banishing the Gemini.

Many critics claimed that the ending of the movie was abrupt and strayed too far from the low-key conclusion to the novel.^{[citation needed]} It is reported that the producers felt that the movie needed an exorcism to justify the title and the ending was therefore inserted.^{[citation needed]} It is said that William Peter Blatty was unhappy with the eventual ending to the film.^{[citation needed]}

• Originally, Blatty wanted this film to follow events from the first Exorcist film, but not be a direct sequel. He wanted the film to have the same title as the book (Legion). During production, the film was referred to as Exorcist: Legion (without the numerals). Morgan Creek changed the name to Exorcist III: Legion and also wrote and shot a new scene where an exorcism takes place in the mental ward. The original trailers refer to the film as The Exorcist 1990 (with the logo being the word "The" with "Exorcist" beneath it in a wider font and "1990" beneath it in the same narrow font as "The" making the image of a crucifix. Eventually the subtitle "Legion" dropped completely and the film was released as The Exorcist III.
• Blatty attempted to contact friend William O'Malley to reprise his role as Father Dyer from the first film; however, O'Malley was busy and could not take up the part. Blatty then hired Ed Flanders, who was originally supposed to appear as the warden, Dr. Temple.
• Some of the scenes refer to Blatty's original novel The Exorcist, such as Father Dyer's complaint about becoming addicted to lemon drops, because the students who go to confessional have it on their breath to hide the odor of marijuana.
• Zohra Lampert, who played Kinderman's wife, is best known for her lead role in another well-remembered horror film, 1971's Let's Scare Jessica to Death.
• The film picks up 15 years from where the original 1973 Exorcist film left off, not referencing the events of the first 1977 sequel "Exorcist II: The Heretic".
• The poem uttered by Patient X is Sonnet 72 by John Donne ("Death be not proud, though some have called thee".)

The film had two major changes after production at the request of the studio:

• Jason Miller was hired because the studio wanted someone from the original movie to be included. Miller was the logical choice since the other two character alumni from the original film, Kinderman and Father Dyer, were played respectively by Lee J. Cobb (who had since died) and William O'Malley (who only took the role in the original film as a favor to Blatty, and who was not available to reprise the role). Unfortunately, actor Brad Dourif had already been hired to play Patient X, so some reshooting and editing was needed. Miller played the Patient X / Karras identity and Dourif played the James "The Gemini Killer" Venamun character. All of Dourif's lines as Karras were reshot with Miller.
• The Father Morning scenes were spliced into the film because the studio wanted an exorcism in the film to make the title relevant. This was less cleverly included, and there is quite a bit of discontinuity, especially during the final scene in which Morning's body vanishes and reappears.
• There is some confusion among fans as to what exactly happens in the reshot "exorcism" climax. While doing online publicity for the re-release of The Exorcist in 2000, William Peter Blatty explained that the new climax, which differs from that of Legion was mandated by the studio in order to add more action and overt horror to the picture, and that he had to make the best of it in the narrative while racing to complete the film. He confirmed that when the possessed Karras speaks in an asexual voice, saying, "I must save my son, the Gemini," that this in fact is either a returned Pazuzu or, as Blatty put it, "old Scratch himself" taking control. This ties in to the revelation earlier in the film that the Gemini was sent into Karras' body as revenge for the Regan MacNeil exorcism. The altered voice in the climax is deliberately similar to that of Mercedes McCambridge, who provided the voice of the original demon in The Exorcist, and the role is essayed in The Exorcist III by Colleen Dewhurst, who was uncredited. The originally-shot climax of the film, which hewed much closer to the ending of Legion, can be glimpsed in the theatrical trailer, in which Karras/the Gemini is shown "morphing" through a variety of faces.

• The Exorcist III at the Internet Movie Database
• TheNinthConfiguration.com - A website dedicated to William Peter Blatty, The Ninth Configuration & Legion

v • d • e The Exorcist
Novels: The Exorcist • The Ninth Configuration • Legion Original films: The Exorcist (1973) • Exorcist II: The Heretic (1977) • The Exorcist III (1990) Prequel films: Exorcist: The Beginning (2004) • Dominion: Prequel to the Exorcist (2005) Other: The Ninth Configuration (1980) • Repossessed (1990) • Possessed (2000) • Pazuzu (The Exorcist)