- Director: William Peter Blatty
- Writers: William Peter Beatty
- Stars: George C. Scott, Ed Flanders, Brad Dourif
- Run Time: 1 Hour, 50 Minutes
- Link: https://amzn.to/3vDHt0e
Synopsis
Georgetown 1990. Father Dyer looks at the stairs where so many people have died. It’s been fifteen years ago today. Detective Kinderman still thinks about Father Damien. Credits roll.
The helicopters are searching, and they’ve found a body. Kinderman thinks it’s related to the Gemini Killer, who’s been dead for fifteen years. Kinderman and Father Dyer go to see a movie. They talk about theology, philosophy, and murdering fish. Kinderman talks about a particularly gruesome murder he worked on just this morning. It turns out the kid was conscious, just paralyzed with a drug.
An old woman goes to confession, and the woman talks about killing seventeen victims. She then kills and mutilates the priest. The priest was paralyzed just like that kid. The priest is missing the index finger on his right hand. The fingerprints come back, and two different people may have committed these very similar murders. That night, Kinderman dreams of Heaven… sort of.
Kinderman gets a call the next morning from the hospital. Father Dyer has been beheaded like the other two cases. All his blood has been drained into little sample cups next to the body. The nurse on duty at the time is creepy, but says she saw one of the patients passed out on the floor outside the Father’s room. It’s an old lady with Alzheimer’s who doesn’t know anything. She says she hears dead people talking through the radio.
They check out the “disturbed ward,” and the doctor explains the security system as he walks down the hall, smoking a cigarette. The Gemini Killer may be dead, but Kinderman suspects it’s a copycat. There was disinformation fed to the press about the Gemini, but these new murders have all the hidden details exactly right.
The higher-up priest suggests that maybe that exorcism back in ’73 had something to do with it. He ties together the three victims and the MacNeil exorcism. The fingerprints come back, and it was the old Alzheimer’s woman.
The doctor tells Kinderman about a psychotic patient they’ve had in isolation for fifteen years. He claims to be the Gemini Killer. The man in cell 11 turns out to be Damien Karras. He denies that he’s Karras, but it sure looks like him. They have a long conversation, and the killer’s face changes during their talk. He knows about the recent deaths, but he’s been in isolation the whole time. The nurse says the man has been unconscious during each of the murders. When Kinderman looks at the file for the Gemini Killer, we see a photo of the other face of the man in cell 11.
A nurse is beheaded. The doctor is dead too, from suicide. The Gemini Killer explains that this is all revenge for getting back at those who exorcised that girl in 1973. Father Karras is inside him now, watching everything and suffering through the murders. It took fifteen years to regenerate Karras’ damaged brain cells and become active again.
As Kinderman thinks over their talk, we see the old Alzheimer’s woman crawl across the room of the hospital to get outside. Kinderman realizes the Gemini’s latest threat is to his daughter and rushes home. “Catatonics are so easy to possess,” says the nurse before all hell breaks loose.
Meanwhile, Father Morning pretty much comes out of nowhere to do an exorcism of the man in cell 11. It goes badly for him.
Kinderman returns to the cell and finds the priest’s body. They do battle, but before the Gemini can kill Kinderman, the priest wakes up and distracts Gemini enough for Kinderman to shoot him several times.
Commentary
There’s a lot of humor here, such as Kinderman and the carp in his bathtub. Kinderman and Dyer bickering in the hospital. The mental patients. The chain-smoking, OCD, hoarder psychiatrist.
I don’t know if those giant clipper-tool-things are a real thing, but they are super terrifying, and I wouldn’t want to have to try to use one.
The last third of the film had to be reshot to put an exorcism in it, and the result was a bit of a mess. Most of the film was more of a serial killer mystery than a real demon-possession film, but overall, it was really good.
I want to know how Kinderman explained killing an unarmed man in a straight jacket in a locked cell after having broken his nose a few days prior. That ought to be fun to hear that explanation.