How The GREATEST Horror Movie Sequel Was Almost Ruined
The Legion Cut - How Cult Success (Almost) Salvaged Blatty's Exorcist Sequel
When it originally released, The Exorcist III was not a critical success. Although there were early admirers out of the gate - Kermode among them - the tide of critical opinion was distinctly negative. Variety called it "all mood and no meat", while Empire described the plot as a "house of cards [...] that is constantly collapsing." Despite suffering critical and box office disappointment, though, the film did develop a following as time went on, being regularly championed by Kermode and finding viral fame with its iconic jump scare sequence - widely referred to as one of the scariest horror scenes ever.
This resurgent praise and interest in The Exorcist III sparked conversations over Blatty's original cut, and whether or not it could be salvaged. Blatty eventually published the original script for Legion with the assistance of Kermode, which sparked further discussions of the lost Legion cut potentially being released on home video.
This, unfortunately, did not come to pass, as the original cut Blatty submitted had been lost by Morgan Creek. However, efforts were still made to construct a version of the film that resembled as much of the writer/director's original vision as possible. This was achieved by Shout! Factory in 2016, with the boutique label - working off the blueprint of Blatty's original script - assembling a cut using a mixture of 35mm footage and VHS rushes and dailies taken from the shoot. This "Legion Cut" - also included in the Arrow Video release - is by no means a perfect thing, but it is the closest we'll ever come to seeing what Blatty's film would have looked like had Morgan Creek and Fox not intruded on its production. There's no Father Morning, no Jason Miller as Damien Karras, and no exorcism, leaving us with a sequel that is much closer in tone and spirit to the Legion novel - a "patchwork", as Kermode calls it, but one that best conveys the brilliance of Blatty's fiction.
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