Legion

Lieutenant Kinderman vs. the Devil (or something) again - but, while The Exorcist delivered vivid characters and wham-bang melodrama along with the sensationalism, this sequel pads out the gore with verbose philosophizing and pretentious quasi-theology. A series of horrible Washington, D.C. murders is tormenting aging, Jewish, Yiddish-sardonic cop Kinderman: a twelve-year-old black newsboy is crucified; a priest is decapitated; another priest, Kinderman's chum Dyer, has all his blood drained out of him. Who is the culprit? Well, the killer's modus operandi happens to be exactly the same as that of the "Gemini" killer - a San Francisco psycho who was killed in '71 after 26 murder/mutilations! On the other hand, some evidence points to the severely disturbed patients in a Washington neurology ward, and to neurologist Vincent Amfortas, who's been hearing voices and behaving oddly ever since his beloved wife died of meningitis. And then Kinderman comes face to face with a straitjacketed hospital inmate called "Mr. Sunlight" - who seems to be the Gemini killer. . . but he's inside the body of the late, lamented Father Damien Karras, the exorcist himself!! Could it be that all the victims have some connection to The Exorcist? And are these murders (committed by some sort of neurological remote control) all part of a Satanic vengeance scheme? ("Certain parties were not pleased, to say the least," chirps the loquacious Mr. Sunlight.) So it seems. But Blatty delays the revelation of this simple yet murky plot by giving us: Jewish comedy chez Kinderman; Dr. Amfortas' musings on brain/mind; debate-conversations on religion and pain; and, above all, Kinderman's longwinded interior monologues about the existence of God and the proliferation of evil. ("He thought of death in its infinite groanings, of Aztecs ripping out living hearts and of cancer and of three-year-olds buried alive and he wondered whether God was alien and cruel, but then remembered Beethoven and the dappling of things and the lark. . . . Electrons traveled from point to point without ever traversing the space between. God had his mysteries. Yahweh: 'I shall be there as who I am shall I be there.' Okay. Amen. But it was all so confusing, such a mess the Creator made man to know right from wrong, to feel outrage at all that was monstrous and evil; yet the scheme of creation itself was outrageous. . . .") For the strong of stomach and weak of mind - and, though lacking the Exorcist wallop, sure to attract many of its admirers. (Kirkus Reviews)