Exorcist III, The (1990)

Unlike the disastrous Exorcist II: The Heretic (1977), The Exorcist III was written and directed by the original Exorcist author, William Peter Blatty, and was based on his 1983 best-selling novel Legion.

It’s been seventeen years since the young priest Father Damien Karras died while performing an exorcism on a 12-year-old girl (Linda Blair) in Georgetown, Washington.

Every year on the anniversary of Karras’s death, Lieutenant Kinderman (Oscar winner George C. Scott at his gravelly-voiced best), the homicide detective who investigated the case, meets Damien’s friend, Father Dyer (Ed Flanders), to go to the cinema to cheer each other up.

Kinderman is perplexed by a series of vicious murders that seem to follow a pattern of a brutal serial killer that he knows to be dead (he helped send him to the electric chair).

The murderer claims yet more victims: a priest, a nurse, a young boy – and Father Dyer.

While visiting the hospital where Dyer was killed, Kinderman enters the mental ward where, in a cell, he sees someone he believes to be Damien Karras (Jason Miller reprises the role for which he was nominated for an Oscar) but he knows the priest is dead – or is he?

Who is the killer? How does Father Damien know so much about the murders? Could he be the killer? No. Surely that’s impossibly ridiculous.

A woman crawls by unnoticed – on the ceiling like a fly.

Flames erupt, snakes slither, the ground opens and reveals a writhing pit of the damned. The evil is back.

This is one case Kinderman is determined to solve come what may.

For the first hour or so, this film seems to have no real direction. It spends an inordinate amount of time giving graphic details of the murders (without showing anything), so it’s like watching an episode of Columbo or Kojak.

But the film serves as much more of a successor to the first film than the sequel did, though it was no doubt harmed at the box office by Exorcist II, which had no involvement from the creative team behind the original film.

Watch out for Samuel L. Jackson and basketball’s Patrick Ewing in blink-and-you’ll-miss-’em bit part roles.

Lt. Kinderman
George C. Scott
Father Dyer
Ed Flanders
The Gemini Killer
Brad Dourif
Patient X
Jason Miller
Father Morning
Nicol Williamson
Dr Temple
Scott Wilson
Nurse Allerton
Nancy Fish
Stedman
George DiCenzo
Ryan
Don Gordon
University President
Lee Richardson
Sergeant Atkins
Grand L. Bush
Mrs Clelia
Mary Jackson
Nurse X
Viveca Lindfors
Dr Freedman
Ken Lerner
Nurse Keating
Tracy Thorne

Director
William Peter Blatty