“An abomination”: The movie William Friedkin said had less integrity than porn
Unnecessary sequels have long garnered controversy throughout the history of modern Hollywood, and for good reason, too. Often adding very little onto a story many consider to be already ‘complete’, cinema is littered with unnecessary sequels from Jaws 2 to Blues Brothers 2000, but no one does sequels quite like the horror genre, with even the strangest flics like the William Friedkin classic The Exorcist getting the franchise treatment.
Indeed, while slasher flicks like Friday the 13th and Nightmare on Elm Street lean more obviously into the idea of countless sequels, the conclusion to Friedkin’s 1973 film called for no such follow-up. The dark tale of faith, telling the story of a young girl who becomes possessed by demonic forces and her mother who requests help from the catholic church, ends with a perfect act of dramatic sacrifice.
This didn’t stop Warner Bros from seeing the potential for a franchise, though, with the film being given two direct sequels in 1977 and 1990. More recently, the film was given two awful prequel movies in 2004 and 2005, as well as a truly tragic 2023 re-imagining titled The Exorcist: Believer, which may just be the worst in the series to date, shamelessly taking what made the original so good and remarketing it in a tacky re-skin.
It’s fair to say that Friedkin, who was never afraid to share his opinion no matter how fiery, hated each and every one of these sequels, though he saved his fury for one film in particular.
Released four years after the release of the original film, Exorcist II: The Heretic followed the same young girl, now a teenager, who discovers that the devil still resides within her soul. Adminantly having no part in the sequel alongside the writer of the original novel, William Peter Blatty, Friedkin was wise to stay out of the project, with the horror flick later being considered one of the worst of all time.
Sharing his thoughts about the film in an interview with Mick Garris, Friedkin steadily grew in fury: “I felt that The Exorcist was totally complete in itself, and to do a sequel, would just be done for commercial purposes and no other. The so-called sequel – ‘The Harry Tick,’ or whatever they refer to it as – to me it’s an abomination…it’s a bad movie…wrought by people who are, in my opinion, fourth and fifth rate intellects”.
Stating that directors John Boorman and Rospo Pallenberg and writer William Goodhart degraded the quality of his film and Blatty’s book, Friedkin added that their efforts were like taking a novel by Leo Tolstoy or Charles Dickens and coming up with a “porno musical”. Continuing in this same vein, he exclaimed: “I’ve seen works of pornography that have more integrity than that picture”.
Take a look at the whole interview where Friedkin explains his love for his own movie and, conversely, blasts the sequel below.
