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The Exorcist was a trailblazing adaptation of a great novel, even if the director and novelist didn't see eye to eye. The first sequel, Exorcist II: The Heretic, was utter and incoherent nonsense; Richard Burton must have been drunk when he signed on for that tripe, and Linda Blair must have been hurting for work.
Thankfully, the novelist who wrote the original book stepped behind the camera this time. William Peter Blatty wrote and directed Exorcist III, which he based upon his novel Legion. He set the tale back where it all started for Exorcist fans: in Georgetown. He kept a few surviving characters, namely Lt. Kinderman and Father Dyer.
Kinderman (George C. Scott) has lately been plagued by a rash of unexplainable murders which carry religious overtones. He has a buddy in local priest Father Dyer (Ed Flanders), who has currently been called to the carpet by his superiors for some off-color comments he has made. Specifically, he has apparently informed one would-be benefactor to the Church, "Jesus loves you. Everyone else thinks you're an asshole." What a guy. Say....wasn't his character the same one played by real-life priest Father William O'Malley in the original Exorcist? You betcha. This tale is all about expanding sidebar characters from the original and casting familiar faces in the roles.
After Dyer is found bled to death in his hospital bed after a routine exam, Kinderman investigates the hospital on a more thorough level and eventually comes to notice a catatonic patient who is housed in the psycho ward. This guy looks a lot like an older version of Damian Karras from the original film, and he's even played by Jason Miller, who played the role in The Exorcist. The problem is that Father Damian Karras supposedly fell out of a high-story window and tumbled down a flight of cement stairs to his death in 1973. Didn't he?
Ooooh...that happened, all right. But some diabolical doings were at work, leaving some pissed-off demons with a holy priest's body and soul which they could meld with the spirit of a character called The Gemini Killer (Brad Dourif), who, as happy coincidence, was concurrently being fried in the electric chair some distance away. "So while he was about to slip out," Gemini later explains to Kinderman, "the Master was slipping me in." And as Kinderman gradually comes to realize that this is really Damian Karras--wrongly pronounced dead, wandered off the autopsy table, coffin filled with rocks and buried--he also comes to know that the spirit of the long-executed Gemini killer is using Karras' detained body to enact violent murders in a devilishly unexpected way..
The Gemini Killer delights in creative and methodical carnage. He's a cruel bastard who should have ridden the lightning many years ago, but he survived. He enjoys making his victims suffer by first injecting them with a paralyzing chemical so that they can feel his mutilation but can't scream or lose consciousness. He also delights in the spiritual destruction and torments of Damian Karras, who sees the carnage that Gemini, using his body as a catalyst, is causing.
The character is played by both Miller and Dourif, shifting back and forth between personalities. As can be expected in this kind of project, laced with some deliciously dark humor, genre favorite Dourif chews up the screen in every scene he's featured. Maybe he was still riding the dementia wave from his then-recent Chucky debut, but here he is at once commanding, terrifying and hysterically funny on certain lines. Miller, meanwhile, seems to have downed a pint of Old Charter on an empty stomach every time he's onscreen, droning his lines in a Mercedes McCambridge-like cigarette rasp.
Near the conclusion, Dyer's colleague Father Morning (Nicol Williamson) comes forward and advances to the hospital cell where Gemini has seemingly claimed spiritually dominion. The demon already has the skeptical Kinderman pinned to a wall, pistol in one hand but unable to use it. This is the best-written scene in Exorcist III, as George C. Scott delivers a scathing, wrenching monologue about all that is bad in the world. He's a believer now, make no mistake.
If the climax seems forced, it's because it is the only direction the storyline could go without setting up a needless sequel. The final scenes of Exorcist III, featuring a burning sunrise over Georgetown and some canoers furiously paddling on the local river, plus a closure shot of Damien Karras' grave--now truly his resting place--make for a respectable end for this story.
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