My Venice Film Festival viewing of David Kittredge‘s excellent Boorman and the Devil was greeted with blissful vibes and subdued awe. Critics and industry folks are like that — their emotions always in check.
But when it played last Wednesday night at the Brooklyn’s Nitehawk Cinema under the aegis of the Brooklyn Horror Film Festival, the crowd was frequently laughing at the litany of blunders and terrible misfortunes endured by director John Boorman as he attempted to shoot the artistically ambitious Exorcist II: The Heretic during the summer and fall of ’76, followed months later by the buckshot scorn of critics and paying audiences when it opened on 6.17.77.
For Kittredge’s doc dispenses gallows humor in spades, and everyone over the age of ten knows what it’s like when things start going really badly…laughter is the only sane response when fate and the gods have allied against you…when a bad luck streak not only won’t stop but gets worse and worse.
