Troubled by an exorcism he recently conducted in South Africa, a Catholic priest named Lamont agrees to investigate the death of his colleague Merrin, who was killed during the exorcism of a young girl, Regan. She now attends a school for mentally disturbed children, but when Lamont arrives to meet her, he realizes that whatever once possessed her isn't finished yet.

On paper, this movie looks okay. It has a cast of good actors. Richard Burton replaces Max Von Sydow as the lead priest, Linda Blair returns as an adolescent Regan, Von Sydow himself returns in a series of flashbacks, and James Earl Jones and Ned Beatty make brief appearances. Ennio Morricone scored the movie and John Boorman, the moviemaker that gave us Deliverance, directed it.

But alas, things quickly careen off the rails. Boorman's unfocused direction doesn't mirror any primal terror and moral conflict, but delivers absurd pretentiousness and unintentional humor instead. There are several ridiculous plot convolutions involving a hokey mind-reading device, a trip to Africa, James Earl Jones wearing a grasshopper costume and Regan's demonic doppelganger vamping it up in negligee. And all this builds up towards a confusing, noisy, and anti-climactic finale.

That doesn't mean that there's no entertainment in making fun of this movie as it struggles with its philosophical musings. But unlike the first version, which effectively combined theological conflicts with sensational onscreen outrage, Exorcist II: The Heretic tries to marry Christian worries about good and evil to vague renderings of traditional African religion without doing justice to either. We're ostensibly given a war between God and the devil, taking in science versus the supernatural for good measure, but at the end you'll most likely be wondering what the hell it was all about.

The movie's star cast doesn't help a lot. Blair may have brilliantly portrayed a possessed child in The Exorcist, but she shows up with an attitude this time, including her firm stance taken against wearing any special effects make-up. She delivers a bland and uninvolving performance, and she's generally unbelievable as a spiritual battleground. Richard Burton goes horribly overboard as a tormented clergyman, staring into space or muttering portentous dialogue, and I couldn't help feeling sorry for him.

Exorcist II: The Heretic doesn't fail for want of trying though. There are some genuinely dreamlike, albeit notably studio-bound, flashbacks featuring Von Sydow, and William A. Fraker's (Rosemary's Baby) washed-out cinematography can be quite striking with some good photographic tricks and intricate model work. And they're so pleased with their insect photography that they've taken every opportunity to throw it in.

Ah yes, the locusts, metaphor of rampant evil and demise. As it turns out, Regan appears to be a 'good locust' (don't ask), a sort of neutralizing force for the plague of Satan's hordes ready to unfold. This is as far as I could figure things out anyway, with all the contrivances of an overstretched use of a hypnosis machine and multiple other distractions. Be not worried, I'm not spoiling anything here.

How does one go about following up one of the most successful horror movies of all time? Well, judged by Exorcist II: The Heretic: you don't. This is one of those movies that makes you wonder what the hell they were thinking when they made it. It does have campy entertainment value and some admirable cinematography but other than that, this movie is a disaster, only recommended to Exorcist-completists and diehards of the franchise.