So I watched Exorcist II: The Heretic last night. →[More:]I bought the Complete Exorcist Anthology the other day (it has two cuts of The Exorcist, Exorcist II and III, and the Schrader and Harlin versions of the prequel--I've only seen the first movie in the series). And last night I popped Exorcist II in the DVD player.

I'm pretty sure that it's one of the worst movies I've seen in quite some time. Great cinematography throughout; expensive and elaborate (for the time) visual effects; awful, awful movie. Is the worst moment when James Earl Jones intones, "If Pazuzu comes for you I will spit out a leopard?" Is it when a hammy Richard Burton looks almost directly into the camera and says that "evil is horrible ... and fascinating!"? Was it the little strobe-light machine that "scientifically proves" that Regan was possessed? I don't know.

Wikipedia tells me that Martin Scorsese prefers the second one to the first one, and that's the sort of thing that someone on Wikipedia would change if it were wrong, isn't it?

Acclaimed director Martin Scorsese asserts, "The picture asks: Does great goodness bring upon itself great evil? This goes back to the Book of Job; it's God testing the good. In this sense, Regan (Linda Blair) is a modern-day saint — like Ingrid Bergman in Europa '51, and, in a way, like Charlie in Mean Streets. I like the first Exorcist, because of the Catholic guilt I have, and because it scared the hell out of me; but The Heretic surpasses it. Maybe Boorman failed to execute the material, but the movie still deserved better than it got."

Seriously--did I just read that? Is that a hoax? Or maybe I just don't understand John Boorman's vision.