Whilst recently reviewing 'The Last Exorcism', I drew a complete blank as to other exorcism films that weren't 'The Exorcist'. A quick trip to Wikipedia reminded me that somewhere in the middle of the Naked Gun series of films, Leslie Nielsen had done an exorcism spoof movie called Repossessed.
Seeing as it was made in 1990, long before the spoof movie bubble burst with turgid garbage like the Scary Movie films, then defecated upon with the likes of Superhero Movie and Epic Movie (sorts of films that lost any sense of parody, instead just having people dress up as characters from other films and do 'wacky' stuff, they even parodied comedy films, surely self-defeating), I thought it would be relatively 'safe' to try out Repossessed. Boy, was I wrong.
Warning signs should have come in the form of writer/director Bob Logan, whose dubious CV mainly includes Meatballs 4, and cartoon versions of Dennis (not that one) and Ghost Busters (not those ones either). This is just as bad as that all sounds.
For what it's worth the plot of Repossessed concerns Nancy Aglet (Linda Blair, who was of course the child star of The Exorcist, and must have had a nice chunk of change thrown at her to do this), who after being possessed by Satan as a child, becomes repossessed after Satan comes out of her TV. Upon getting wind of this, sleazy TV evangelist Ernest Weller (Ned Beatty) and his wife Fanny Ray (Lana Schwab) decide it will be a great idea to perform a televised exorcism. Young priest Luke Brophy (Anthony Starke) must persuade the priest who performed Nancy's first exorcism, Father Jebediah Mayii (Leslie Nielsen) to come out of retirement to save her soul once more...
Apart from the mannerisms and the scant funny lines that Leslie Nielsen has, this film is total garbage. Most of the jokes don't hit the mark at all (and a good chunk of them are instantly dated, Sean Penn punching reporters, Pee Wee Herman, etc.), and the rest make little sense (I know these sorts of films are supposed to be random, but why are two wrestling commentators announcing an exorcism all of a sudden?) it's just a horrific mess that can't even keep continuity going, at one point bringing back a characters pet that had been killed about 30 minutes earlier!
And not forgetting the fact that The Exorcist came out in 1973. Did the world really need a spoof of a (at the time) 17 year old movie? The answer was no, Repossessed didn't even get a nationwide release and only raked in a little over a million dollars, and pretty much vanished without a trace. And deservedly so.
Marketed like a Naked Gun film at times (several posters are exact replicas of the original Naked Gun poster, except with Nielsen holding and standing on a crucifix instead of a gun and a bullet), this is nowhere in those films league and even makes tat like Spy Hard seem like comedy masterpieces. A film totally unworthy of Nielsen's talents.
*
Dreadful stuff. Not the fault of Leslie Nielsen, he tries his best but has barely anything resembling comedy to work with. You probably would get more laughs out of the film it was spoofing. Avoid!
1 comment:
I know these sorts of films are supposed to be random, but why are two wrestling commentators announcing an exorcism all of a sudden?
I watched this movie on television probably around twelve years ago and can barely remember anything except Okerlund and Ventura exchanging quips. I'm a mark for anything wrestling related so I loved that scene. It's actually unreasonable to ask questions like why is this and this happening because normal rules don't have to be followed in this genre. I can't say that I agree or disagree with your review because it's been too long since that one viewing. But I'm now interested in a re-watch so we can possibly compare opinions sometime down the road.
By the way, in defense of Superhero Movie; although far from brilliant, it made effort to tell humor through more than just referencing other movies. For that alone, it doesn't deserve to be lumped in with the Friedberg/Seltzer dump piles like Epic Movie.
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