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William Peter Blatty, writer and director of “The Exorcist” and notable hater of “The Exorcist 2”, has stated this is the true sequel to his original film. The films aren’t directly connected but are in the same universe. Sort of a “spiritual sequel.”
The film follows Stacy Keach, a marine who recently returned from Vietnam and was sent to run a mental hospital for military personnel in a mountain castle. He treats the patients by letting them act out their deepest and darkest fantasies and dreams.
The cast is stellar. Stacy Keach, Tom Atkins, Moses Gunn, Robert Loggia, Joe Spinnell, Richard Lynch, and Scott Wilson are all either patients or men running the hospital.
It’s a cerebral film about the aftermath of boys being sent off to wars they don’t understand and returning as men who must deal with the horrors they have seen. Feverish nightmares and dreamscapes are interwoven with stories of men dealing with mental instability.
This is part dark comedy and part thriller drama. Equal parts Once Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, The Shinning, and Clockwork Orange.
