I saw this movie years ago. I used to own it on VHS (because I am older than the sands of time) and I loved it. I have huge problems with the original "Exorcist," and the second one is just weird as hell, but I thought that the third film was great, for most of it's running time, at least. I say that because the end of this movie really pissed me off and I thought it flew in the face of everything that made the rest of the movie so good. That kind of crap irks me. I decided to revisit it, to see if time has changed my view of things. I figure, if I still hate the ending, I'll still get to see 3/4 of a great movie, and that's better than nothing.
So in this movie, a police lieutenant sees similarities between his current murder case and the murders committed by "the Gemini Killer," who was executed years before. Soon, he discovers that there is an incarcerated mental patient who claims to be the dead Gemini killer. When the lieutenant visits the mental patient, he finds that the man uncannily resembles the priest who died during the exorcism in the first movie. Baffled by these facts, he searches for any connection he can find between the dead Gemini killer and the dead priest.
George C. Scott stars as the lieutenant, and he does a good job, even though he yells a lot. Seriously, calm your grumpy ass down. He's mad for the whole movie, even before he has a reason to be. Brad Dourif plays the Gemini killer, Ed Flanders plays a priest who is a friend of the lieutenant, and Jason Miller plays the mental patient. Everyone does a great job with their performances. They add a lot of class to the movie.
The cinematography is great in this movie too. Seriously, a lot of the shots are beautiful, and the spooky, echoey corridors combined with the music make this movie scary even when nothing is happening but a person walking around. One scene about halfway through the movie is so terrifying I was practically getting heart palpitations just waiting for it to happen again. The first time I saw this movie, that scene scared me so badly that I cried, and I rewound the tape to watch it again (that's how good it is!) and it scared me when it was playing backwards AND AGAIN when I watched it replay. Seriously, great stuff here.
That leads me to my biggest problem with the ending of this movie. Everything in the movie is such a quiet, slow build to terror. Distant sounds of rumbling thunder, whispering voices, and even the aforementioned really terrifying scene is a collection of small, quiet things that create something truly scary when put together. So explain to me why this movie suddenly turns on a dime and decides to throw a big, explosive light show at the end? It would look silly in any movie, but tacked onto the end of this movie it looks ridiculous. That really pisses me off, because I feel like this was a great movie, then the filmmakers all took a bunch of drugs and decided to spend the remainder of the budget on a bunch of fireworks and throw them all at us as punishment for liking the movie. Even after all these years, my opinion hasn't changed. Great movie, turn it off 15 minutes before the end and it will be almost perfect.
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