REPOSSESSED

US, 1990, 80 minutes, Colour.
Linda Blair, Ned Beatty, Leslie Neilson.
Directed by Bob Logan.

While Leslie Neilson had a serious film career (appearing in such films as Forbidden Planet in 1956), he developed a comic style, deadpan humour and farce. This was taken up in the Naked Gun series in the late 1980s. He then made this satire, Repossessed, on The Exorcist. This led to quite an elaborate career in all kinds of spoofs including Dracula Dead and Loving It, Spy Hard, Mr Magoo, Wrongfully Accused as well as appearing in several of the Scary Movie films.

This one is more or less as expected. However, Linda Blair is a good sport appearing as a possessed woman now grown up. Ned Beatty also appears and Leslie Neilson is the exorcist – all done on a TV show. As expected, a lot of the humour is deadpan, much of it obvious, much of it quite juvenile. It is for those who relish parodies of feature films.

1.Entertaining parody? The status of The Exorcist and the Exorcist films? Audiences enjoying parodies?

2.Small budget, brief running time? The settings, the city? The media? The special effects to spoof The Exorcist?

3.The barrage of jokes, the spoof style, the main aspects of The Exorcist being spoofed? The songs?

4.The title and its humour, Linda Blair reappearing? Leslie Neilson as an exorcist?

5.Father Mayli, his remembering, jokes, cracks, Ernest and Fanny, fitness, the music parody? On screen? The exorcism? The end?

6.Linda Blair as Nancy, nice, watching television, her family, the past, the spewing and the swearing and the other trademarks of the Exorcist films?

7.Father Luke, nice, helping Father Mayli, the parody on the priests in The Exorcist, his being possessed?

8.Ernest and Fanny and Babbas? Exploitation? Plots, change?

9.Verbal humour, visual humour, impersonations – including the pope?

10.The value of this kind of spoofing of major films?