Max von Sydow (right) returns in a beautifully-filmed flashback depicting the younger Lankester Merrin’s exorcism of a possessed African boy.


the world we live in, that’s an unpopular notion. It’s also unrealistic. [In “Mark IV”] the girl triumphs over evil. But now it’s a personal victory, not a victory for mankind.”


In the second week of release, word on the street was so bad on both coasts that THE HER- ETIC was collecting less than half what it did dur- ing the excellent opening week. VARIETY noted: “The new ending is not a happy ending as this one plummets fast.” WALL STREET JOURNAL: “Rarely, if ever, have box office receipts declined so drastically.”


When creating “Mark IV,” Boorman ultimately made almost 130 changes from his first version. Several loud wails and screams (which provoked audience laughter) were dropped from the open- ing credit sequence. A previously-discarded pro- logue with narration by Burton and freeze-frames from the first EXORCIST was added. Boorman cut the first tap sequence, probably urged by the NEW YORK TIMES comment: “Seen tap-dancing, as she is on two occasions in EXORCIST II, the chubby- kneed Miss Blair appears to be stomping on live cigar stubs.” A renowned hypnotist had been on- set to actually put Blair and Fletcher under for


their “trance” scenes. But since audiences giggled when the hypnotized actresses’ eyes crossed and rolled, those frames were trimmed or deleted. Pazuzu saying, “Come, Regan! Come, Regan, we’re going flying!” was dubbed over shots of Blair walking in a trance through her apartment. “Spiritual” deletions in the final cut included losing part of Kokumo’s (James Earl Jones) speech about the “brushing of wings” and cutting some dialogue between Burton and Blair at the National History Museum:


LAMONT: In fact, a French priest, Teilhard de Chardin, thought that we’d all come together eventually in some sort of mental telepathy. A kind of world mind, in which everybody would share.


REGAN: When is that supposed to happen?


LAMONT: I don’t know. Father Merrin himself believed that with modern scientific research it could happen quite soon. I mean the kind of research that Dr. Tuskin is doing. But if it happens before we’re ready, we may find ourselves pointing in the wrong direction. Toward Satan.


25


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