Dominion: Prequel to the Exorcist.

Review #2467: Dominion: Prequel to the Exorcist.

Cast: 

Stellan Skarsgård (Father Lankester Merrin), Gabriel Mann (Father Francis), Clara Bellar (Rachel Lesno), Billy Crawford (Cheche), Ralph Brown (Sergeant Major), Israel Aduramo (Jomo), Andrew French (Chuma), Antonie Kamerling (Kessel), Julian Wadham (Major Granville), Eddie Osei (Emekwi), with Rick Warden (Corporal Williams), and Mary Beth Hurt (Pazuzu) Directed by Paul Schrader (#2290 - Cat People [1982])

Review: 

"I’m happy with the film. I realize its limitations. I realize that I made a film with a problematic commercial premise. Now, it may be a quality film, but there was no way this film was gonna go out and break box office records. Not gonna happen. Now the truth is, if they had tarted up my movie, cut it with some gore, done a misleading ad campaign, not shown it to critics, did a huge television [campaign], which is what they did for Renny’s film, they probably could have made somewhere in the same vicinity of money...But, I’m much happier having the film that I made exist in the form that I made it in rather than some tarted-up version I’d have to disown."

Exorcist: The Beginning was such a flop that Paul Schrader actually saw the film on opening weekend with William Peter Blatty and stated, "This is really bad. If it stays this bad, I bet there's a chance I can get mine resurrected." While Warner Bros. planned to give Schrader's film a direct-to-video release, Morgan Creek "generously" let Schrader do a limited theatrical release of his version, specifically a small amount of time and money to refine things (examples include that most of the music is recycled from the Harlin film and a lack of time to do ADR and color timing work). Tim Silano was approached to edit the movie but he insisted that Schrader be around to oversee it. Schrader, in seeing the nature of the Harlin film, went for "a little more leisurely" edit rather than the staccato cut he had done prior (the final movie was 116 minutes, which happened to be two minutes longer than The Beginning). Caleb Carr (who once called Schrader's original cut "one of the most inept, amateur, utterly flat excuses for a film that has ever been concocted") and William Wisher Jr were the only writers given credit for the screenplay. With a limited release in a few theaters (the same weekend as Revenge of the Sith) the movie was at least seen by people the way it should have been: not on the direct-to-video bargain bin; Schrader later called the experience as one he shouldn't have done, complete with saying he "got suckered". The Exorcist was not done being pillaged for new material, as a television series came and went in the 2010s before a new film came out with David Gordon Green's The Exorcist: Believer (2023), a movie that, you guessed it, paled in comparison to the original. 

It may interest you to know that Schrader once called The Exorcist "the greatest metaphor in cinema - God and the Devil in the same room arguing over the body of a little girl." The two Exorcist prequels basically run from the same start and end points with diverging ways to get there: a priest with a crisis of faith (1947/1949) encounters something in the midst of his time in Derati (British Kenya) that challenges who he is before he regains his faith. You could say that Blatty had a point in calling this film a "handsome, classy, elegant piece of work" while also noting that it can only go so far in trying to live up to its namesake. Both movies show Merrin have his faith shaken after being terrorized by a Nazi that has him choose people to die rather than see a whole group get taken out but this one starts with it rather than show it in parts as before. But here he is now an archaeologist that happens to find a buried church in Kenya, complete with having the exorcism target be a youth who goes from crippled to far more walkable by the time the effects (not quite finished, but hey) show up for a movie that at least tried to take evil seriously (before the loin cloth, anyway, that is when I start to chuckle). It is curious to see Skarsgård again hold up an Exorcist movie with the best performance, mainly because there is something to ponder in seeing one try to pick up the pieces of their faith with conviction that does at least make you believe he would be ready for what could happen next in say, The Exorcist. I guess you could say Mann provides the one supporting presence in either of these movies that is worth a glance, even if his role is mostly a whimpering one in the eyes of guilt (both movies end the same way for him anyway).You could say that the depiction of the military intruding upon the natives imitating what Merrin saw in the war is a curious one, but even then, it feels a bit polite when one is talking about evil (Merrin isn't exactly much better, at one point he wants people to work really really hard to dig out that church). I really wanted to like the movie, but there is a hollow feeling I get when watching the movie, it just doesn't feel nearly as tense or as interesting as it wishes to be in "angst". Schrader just seemed more interested in personal angst with Cat People and it also just seemed like a more well-rounded film. As a whole, Dominion holds up better as an overall movie than The Beginning, but neither movie really moves the needle on belonging as an actual prequel to The Exorcist. In their travels from finding faith through an exorcism, Dominion is mild in execution and altogether not as curious as it really feels like it should be, but it at least is entertainment when compared to the slop of Beginning. Pick your poison, I suppose.

Overall, I give it 6 out of 10 stars.

Cat People (1982).

Review #2290: Cat People (1982). 

Cast: 

Nastassja Kinski (Irena Gallier), Malcolm McDowell (Paul Gallier), John Heard (Oliver Yates), Annette O'Toole (Alice Perrin), Ruby Dee (Female), Ed Begley Jr (Joe Creigh), Scott Paulin (Bill Searle), Frankie Faison (Detective Brandt; dubbed by Albert Hall), Lynn Lowry (Ruthie), and John Larroquette (Bronte Judson) Directed by Paul Schrader.

Review: 

"Cat People wasn’t successful. It really fell between two stools: it was an attempt to have things both ways, which is to have a classy film and a horror film. Well, the horror audience went and said, ‘Hey, this doesn’t look like a horror film, it’s not for us’, and the sophisticated audience went and said, ‘Hey, this is just a horror film.’ So it wasn’t really satisfying to the audience."

Sure, give a few decades and you can just remake a movie right then and there. The 1942 Cat People had been a team effort that had DeWitt Bodeen write the screenplay as based in collaboration with producer Val Lewton, director Jacques Tourneur, and editor Mark Robson. The process of remaking the film was first brought up by Milton Subotsky before Universal Pictures eventually got the rights and made their own push that took several years of the 1970s (Robert Vadim was interested to direct at one point). You might recognize the screenwriter in Alan Ormsby, the co-director and writer of Deranged (1974) and a variety of other writing projects. Universal tapped Paul Schrader (who once labeled the 1942 rendition as one that he didn't find very good) to direct the film, with most knowing him for his work on scripts such as Taxi Driver (1976) before becoming a director with Blue Collar (1978); he claimed that he had contributed to the writing of the film in terms of its prologue and the ending to make it more distinct from the original, although Ormsby claims otherwise. The movie was a mild success with audiences at the time, or at the very least managed to accomplish the goal of not inspiring a filmmaker to try and do their own remake of a remake four decades later. Schrader has been quoted as saying that in his attempts to do a genre film as a "very salutary exercise" in not being about himself, he ended up making a movie that ranked up there as among his most personal.

The funny thing about the films is that it accomplishes one thing in particular: it sure is distinct on its own merit from the original that you won't mistake it as a copy because of its erotic elements within the perils of flesh. You might remember that the original dealt with a woman (played by Simone Simon) who thought they were descended from a tribe of, well, cat people that may or may not turn into black panthers when aroused (it basically had elements of the noir); the lady in that movie went the whole road to marriage without getting kissed. Here we have a woman who must confront the peril of really having a family tradition of were-cats that must kill in order to turn back. It just so happens to involve a few bits of skin and the mix of effects and cats in a movie best described as lurid curiosity for 118 minutes. If you asked me which movie called Cat People is the better among the two, I think I would throw my hands in the air and shrug at it basically being a dead heat because each are from accomplished filmmakers that represent their era quite well in overall enjoyment vs. rewarding the patience of those who are into what it is selling. Kinski practically lifts the film almost entirely to the realm of curious because of how she acts in the film without really even acting that much to begin with (apparently, she seemed to felt manipulated when it came to her assessment of the resulting film). Her grace really does have the instincts of a cat in frenzied timing that sells the plight of flesh. Whether you compare the two films or not, she sure exceeds Simon when it comes to worthwhile lead performances by a handy margin. McDowell may not be in the movie too long, but he sure is loopy enough to belong in weirdo enjoyment that he sells from the word "go", but I say that as someone who went with the film's peddling of ideas right then and there (you really should just see it right then and there rather than skimming the plot). Heard and O'Toole are fine, albeit on a smaller scale that only works some of the time in trying to do a would-be love triangle that only works for those who like the actors enough in the first place; Heard just happens to be the ideal guy to chase a girl like Kinski in strange pursuer/pursued, as opposed to the mild other. Besides, it is quite the curiosity to see Heard having to engage with the climax in a cathouse blues type of way that really will make or break the film for you when it comes to stupendous suspension of disbelief; I dont know if I would call the film "classy", but even "dedicated" is a better way to put it than,  say, "not fun horror". It is a movie that looks and sounds exactly on point of mystical curiosity, never turning itself off even when not going all-out for effects work (you get some blood anyway). As a whole, it is a strange sensual kind of sensationalism that one will either take right in for scintillating enjoyment or baffled disappointment. It feels good to be on the side of the former but have it your way among the creatures of the night.

Overall, I give it 8 out of 10 stars.