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Although I don’t regularly follow any particular sports team in any particular athletic discipline with anything that could be described as fervor, I have a strong affinity for the underdog, in whatever shape or form this theoretical downtrodden pooch might make itself known. The most insightful example would be my random emotional connection to the Denver Broncos and their inability to win a Super Bowl until the late 1990s in Super Bowl XXXII. This was a game which I decided to actually place official bets on for the first and only time and if I had any inkling of the best way to go about this, I could have made a serious killing, what with the Green Bay Packers being double digit favorites to win and all.

The Broncos’ victory in ’98 in San Diego and the following year in Miami killed the novelty factor for me. But whether it’s a 40 to 1 long shot at the Preakness or my hometown Portland Trail Blazers starting out once again in search of their first NBA title since 1977, the surest and simplest way to curry my emotional favor is to be “that team” that the announcers snigger at and the odds makers have forsaken.

This introduction is particularly relevant because this week’s column concerns a film that receives almost no mention outside of its recurring inclusion on those frequent lists of the worst sequels and/or worst films. I think the reason it continues to be adorned with those crowns of thorns on the way to its perennial crucifixion is that it’s the most visible and blatant example of a direct sequel to a phenomenally successful and acclaimed original film that seems to shit all over what everyone loved the first time around, and to do it intentionally. For comparison: I have never seen Jaws 2, and so am taking a shot the dark in the here, but I would imagine that even if it doesn’t live up to Spielberg’s benchmark, it offers terror, and shark attacks, and Roy Scheider begging the damn city council to just shut down the beach.

Exorcist II: The Heretic is not a sequel designed for anyone who found the first film to be grueling, and terrifying, and unnerving, and upsetting and wants those traits again in larger portions. (Perhaps this is why the film’s small number of defenders seems to include those who actively dislike The Exorcist and respond to The Heretic’s refusal to worship at the altar of its parent’s success.) It makes little effort to up the ante on special effects or scares or gross-out moments. It doesn’t attempt to play up the spiritual angle at the expense of the secular adornments. It continues the plot, but oftentimes at right angles to the first film. It would be straight camp if it took itself just a little more seriously or was made by a director of considerably less talent.

For some initial frame of reference, I would argue that The Heretic’s bizarre plot rhythms, hallucinogenic imagery, and complete aversion to offering anything even slightly akin to the “pleasures” of The Exorcist, are mirrored most closely by a pair of sequels from last decade - Book of Shadows: Blair Witch 2 and The Ring Part Two. Both of those films infuriated me, as I imagine they did many others, because they seemed to have no interest in acknowledging the strengths of the first film.

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