The Ninth Configuration (1980)
Trivia
Jump to:
Spoilers (1)
William Peter Blatty has said that he considers this movie to be the true sequel to The Exorcist (1973) as opposed to a mere follow-up. The novel and film of "The Exorcist" deals with the existence of both good and evil, "The Ninth Configuration" deals with the mystery of good, and the third novel, "Legion", deals with the human's punishment of evil for original sin. Captain Cutshaw is the same astronaut whom Regan warns "You're gonna die up there" in "The Exorcist". book. However, in the Exorcist film, the astronaut is never mentioned by name (not even in the credits).
The film was partially financed by Pepsico, the makers of soft drinks such as Pepsi. The company had leftover funds that couldn't leave the country of Hungary and to use them, they decided to co-finance the film. Both Pepsi and the director had clauses: Pepsi's was to shoot the film in Budapest; Blatty's was to not have any product placement by the company. Both agreed to the terms, although Blatty slightly relented: a Pepsi machine does appear briefly in one scene.
Joe Spinell's character of "Spinell", a patient at the castle-hospital, was not in the novel nor the original script. Spinell had begged writer and director William Peter Blatty, a close friend of his, to cast him in a small role as the sidekick to Jason Miller's character of Lieutenant Reno. Since there was no part for Spinell in the movie, his character was given the same last name. Nearly all of Spinell's dialogue was ad-libbed.
Stacy Keach and Scott Wilson were last-minute replacements for Nicol Williamson and Michael Moriarty, who were originally slated to play the roles of Colonel Kane and Captain Cutshaw.
William Peter Blatty has stated that Patrick McGoohan agreed to play the part of Killer Kane, but it was at a time that Blatty could not get financing.
Believed to be the first appearance of "The Howie Scream", which is most well-known as the scream that is heard in the video game Starcraft when the Terran Academy building is selected.
Remastered prints of this film are dedicated to one of William Peter Blatty's children, Peter Vincent Blatty who died at 19 years old, He was born on May 17, 1987 and died on November 7, 2006. An "In Loving Memory" dedication to him appears at the end, with the 1971 high tone Lorimar theme playing over it.
According to Jason Miller and actor Richard Lynch in the documentary "The Joe Spinnell Story", one night during filming, several of the actors were out drinking. They ended up getting into a bar fight with some (East) German soldiers, and were arrested. They were the only prisoners in the jail. At one point, the cops recognized Spinnell from "The Godfather". He ended up charming them with stories of the film.
The theme song over the main titles, "San Antone," sung by Denny Brooks, was also used as the main title theme for "Rolling Thunder," three years earlier.
According to his diaries, Charlton Heston was interested in playing Killer Kane in the early seventies.
The astronaut cannot be the same astronaut in the first Exorcist movie, as the timing does not work. This movie is set (as stated at the start of the film) during the end of the Vietnam war (which ended for the U.S. in January of 1973). The third Exorcist movie states the first movie took place in 1975. The war was over by then. There's no way the astronaut, told he'd die in space, in 1975, when the war was over, could go to the castle asylum during the last days of the Vietnam war.
Spoilers
In the beginning of the film, the newly arrived military psychiatrist Colonel Kane is given a guided tour of a military insane asylum, only to discover that his tour guide is not a doctor but a patient of the ward. This foreshadows that Colonel Kane is himself a mental patient under the delusion that he's a doctor.
