10 Horror Movies Where The Reshoots Were Obvious
8. The Exorcist III
Though it's actually a (mostly) very good movie, The Exorcist III is nevertheless the product of enormous in-fighting between writer-director William Peter Blatty and studio Fox.
Because Fox felt that Blatty's quiet psychological horror film wasn't doing enough to lure in audiences expecting more heightened supernatural thrills from an Exorcist movie, they had the director reshoot large swaths of it to be more "dramatic."
Most obviously this included adding an actual exorcism to the film, with Father Morning (Nicol Williamson) showing up in the finale to exorcise the possessed body of Damien Karras (Jason Miller), before the priest is brutally mutilated by having his skin ripped off.
It's a fun scene, though more than any other in the film feels totally at odds with the core tonal throughline of Blatty's vision - it is a wildly overblown feat of theatrical hooey compared to the director's otherwise quiet, character-driven piece of work.
After two acts of admirable, absorbing restraint, the film's nutty finale feels excessively silly and tacked on - because that's exactly what it is.