How do you follow one of the most successful horror movies ever made? If you’re John Boorman, you spend a fortune making something so strange, ambitious, and spectacularly ill-advised that audiences laugh at its premiere and critics compete to find new ways to destroy it. Boorman and the Devil tells the extraordinary story of the making of Exorcist II: The Heretic—the notorious 1977 sequel that nearly derailed Boorman’s career and became shorthand for the disastrous Hollywood sequel. But was it really that bad? Through remarkable behind-the-scenes material and reflections on Boorman’s wildly unconventional vision, the documentary makes the case for looking again at a film that Martin Scorsese thought surpassed the original and John Simon called “the stupidest major movie ever made.” Funny, fascinating, and unexpectedly moving, Boorman and the Devil, with interviews with the film’s cast and creators, admirers and stunned onlookers, is both a first-rate tale of filmmaking gone spectacularly wrong and a celebration of the kind of audacious cinematic failure Hollywood rarely risks anymore.

Reviews:

A funny, surprising, revealing and altogether fascinating document, bursting with crazy details about gonzo 1970s filmmaking.”

—Kyle Smith, Wall Street Journal

“A fascinating, funny and fully riveting film about the making of one of history’s most notorious critical and commercial failures.”

—David Hughes, Time Out

“An essential film for would-be critics, and, well, for anyone with a real passion for the cinematic art.”

—Jennie Kermode, Eye for Film

“Thoroughly enjoyable.”

—Peter Bradshaw, The Guardian

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