Well acted and involving: but who borrowed from whom?

shobill

This Showtime original would just be a moderately budgeted

Exorcist variation, except - it is based on the original incident which

inspired The Exorist. (For this reason, it is incomprehensible to

me why some people here are calling it an `Exorcist ripoff.") I found

it engrossing and entertaining, but I had some problems with the

premise. The film purports to be based on the only possession

case in modern America, but in fact it changed the original story in

many key ways. The original event took place with a 14-year-old

boy in 1949; the film has an 11-year-old boy in the early 1960s.

The date change gives the film an opportunity to talk about Vatican

II-type changes taking place in the Catholic church, along with

Kennedy's election and the civil rights movement. These are

meant to spice up the movie but are mostly irrelevant to the theme

and take away from the story. Dramatic horror-type events ensue

that we expect with possession movies, but now I'm left wondering

which events were mostly true to the event (in an afterword, one of

the original attending priests did say a bottle of holy water went

sailing past him), and which ones were post-Exorcist inspired.

Thus, while this story was supposed to inspire The Exorcist, we

now wonder who borrowed from whom.

All this is saved rather nicely by an intriguing storyline, but in

particular, superb acting by the principals. Timothy Dalton plays

Father William Bowden (which was the priest's actual name), the

priest-professor-exorcist: this, far more than James Bond, is his

type of role. The boy `Robbie" is extremely well acted by young

Jonathan Malen; he plays a more active demon-possessed

youngster than Linda Blair, who was admittedly more spooky, did

decades ago. Other notable performances include Christopher

Plummer as Archbishop Hume and Piper Laurie as Robbie's old

Aunt Hanna. So I count myself among those who thought this a

worthwhile film, especially knowing that it was at least

semi-factual and leaves you pondering what possession really is,

although I would have preferred the real story without the

embellishments. This story reminds us how unfamliar the whole

concept of possession was to Americans prior to the Exorcist. I'm

giving it an 8.

score 8/10

shobill 10 July 2004

Reprint: https://www.imdb.com/review/rw0643671/