Watched the U.S.A.'s 1990  The Exorcist 3 (1:49:50), based on the novel _Legion_ by William Peter Blatty. I find this to be the best of the four Exorcist movies, because it illustrates that salvation from possession is not contingent on the Roman Ritual of Exorcism but, rather, on efficient police work and common sense. Written and directed by Blatty himself, the movie is more about hunting down a serial killer than about a spiritual battle against evil.   

Blatty is an extremely talented director but should be given other subject matter to showcase his abilities. His blocking of characters and his long shots are deliciously 1950s Vittorio De Sica, and his cut-to-cuts show the influence of Alfred Hitchcock. Many details in the sets and backgrounds are cleverly inserted and meant to have a subliminal effect on the viewers. I also give him points for a deep understanding of acting, unless he simply allowed his actors to do their own thing.

On the downside, the screenplay is riddled with quotations and allusions that verge on the pretentious. I also consider dream sequences to be passe. I believe that, should a writer and a director include dream sequences in their work, it is for the most mediocre member of the audience to be capable of interpreting, otherwise they merely end up as surreal video bridges from one scene to the next.

The movie is not free from other glitches. There is too much unexpected and unwarranted yelling. In one scene Kinderman punches Venamun in the face with his left fist (the hand is later bandaged by a nurse), but in the following shot Venamun's face swings to the right rather than to the left. In another scene Nurse Keating hears a clinking sound from her station and traces it to ice cubes melting in a glass inside a room behind a closed door several meters away, too far from where she is to have even heard it. She is later suddenly attacked by a robed figure too reminiscent of Scream (or the typical man on the street suddenly swiped off-screen by a speeding bus). There were too many hospital scenes, and I often wondered whether I was at a screening of One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest. Venamun's insane monologues were so ham-acted that I felt like I was watching Andy Serkis auditioning for the role of Gollum. There is too much of a lull after 3/4 of the movie due to exposition. If Venamun is the Devil incarnate, can commit all of those murders, and can shut doors and windows by remote, why can't he even break off his chains and escape from the asylum? And those Halloweeny, pumpkin-orange and lemon yellow contact lenses were really hilarious--were these a precursor of Johnny Depp's eyes as the Mad Hatter?

I still cannot buy the concept of reciting prayers and asperging holy water that sizzles on skin--it's too Horror of Dracula for me. I believe that evil is conquered by the new and the unexpected, rather than by formulas.

Finally, where was legion? There was only one serial killer from beginning to end.