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Reviews
Arli$$ (1996)
Oh so not funny...
This is possibly the worst show on television. With great shows like "Sex and the City", "Curb your enthusiasm", "The Sopranos" and "Oz" I don't know why HBO still has this garbage.
Mostly I don't know why it's still on the air. It's terribly not funny. The actor who plays Arliss annoys me to no end. It's the kind of show that sneaks up on you after a show you enjoy is over and you're too tired to get the remote. And then you lye there...in agony...
It's terribly, horribly, wretchedly, grossly, stupendously, extremely, bad.
Exorcist II: The Heretic (1977)
It takes awhile to get comfortable with...
If this film was re-leased in 1977 about a girl who was previously posessed by the devil and had to delve into her subconscience to clear out her painful memories( while getting wrapped up in a new storyline containing trips to africa on the wings of a locust, cinematically beautiful dream sequences, almost poetic dialogue, some fun scares and a dash of science fiction)it would have been hailed. BUT, this is not the case.
This film is a sequal. Half of movie-gowers frown upon sequals as a whole but a sequal to a classic horror film like "The Exorcist" is just un-heard of. "Exorcist 2: The Heretic", I admit takes awhile to get comfortable with. The mind frame, pscological station and even reality of the original film is ignored. This is a new film, not a continuing story. At times it even seems like the second part of a trilogy never completed, unraveling a mystery we thought solved at the conclusion of "The Exorcist" (Although an "Exorcist 3" does exist, it ignores the second and it is more of a direct sequal to the first).
There are many differences between this film and the first. In the first, posessed Regan spouts out lengthy lines of obscenities, while in this film there are hardly any, all the dialogue spoken like victorian literature. A desperate, scrambling mother wouldn't exist in the reality of "The Heretic", this is why her absense seems to make some sense. This film also seems to take a psycological route...it asks questions of whether evil is a religious or psycological being.
Although, I do have my complaints. Richard Burton's peroformance isn't all that great, and Linda Blair sometimes seems forced. I also think all religious tie-ins should've been cut...although it seems too much, the title is "The Heretic" which suggests the questioning of faith.
Also it seems edited to death. I myself have only seen the film which ends where Richard Burton is alive but I've heard of another in which he dies. The film seems just a tad too choppy and like there are a few pieces missing. It probably could've used a re-write too.
But all in all I surprisingly enjoyed it alot. Although "The Exorcist" is superior, this film is a worthy sequal. Visually most of all, it rivals the original. I wish more sequals like this were made today...maybe John Boorman just had some guts.
See it with an open mind.