The Exorcist III (1990, dir. William Peter Blatty
by Mike
There was so much in this movie that creeped me out and sat with me. The basic premise is that a police detective (George C. Scott) is working a case involving a serial killer that fits a similar one from 15 years earlier. The problem with this scenario is that the person responsible for those killings was executed and couldn’t be committing these new crimes. The catch here is that this new set of murders are done in the exact same method as the previous ones, all the way down to the small details the police intentionally left out of media reports to weed out bogus tips and confessions.
Now here’s where the creepy comes in: we’re introduced to a man who’s been locked up in a psychiatric ward for the past 15 years who is claiming to be the killer. Once this part of the movie kicks in, we get to all the imagery I’ve had rattling around in my head past 20 something years. Statues that turn their heads, senile old people crawling across the ceiling, a mysterious figure in a sheet with shears behind someone about to lop off a head, a priest stuck to a ceiling whose skin peels off, and Brad Dourif being Brad Dourif.
