When it comes to discussing terrible sequels to great movies, Exorcist II is invariably at the front of the conversation.

It’s a movie which manages to throw out just about everything which made the original so compelling. Linda Blair returns as a teenage Regan, and Max Von Sydow plays a young Father Merrin in a series of bizarre Africa-set flashbacks, but the sense of gritty realism that William Friedkin so skilfully created is gone. In its place is mumbo jumbo about ’spitting leopards’, a swarm of locusts invading Washington, and an unhinged performance from Richard Burton as the priest protagonist. 

Director John Boorman has made some great movies (Point Blank, Deliverance etc), but he comes badly unstuck here. The movie was such a disaster that there is an entertaining book about the car crash of its production and subsequent reception. (People were laughing throughout at the premiere – not a great start). The events in the movie were subsequently wholly ignored in author William Peter Blatty’s own belated (not great but much better) sequel Exorcist III.

This is the US one-sheet poster and is for sale here.