A killer recent Jackpot Records vinyl reissue of Morricone's gonzo devil-psych soundtrack to Boorman's visionary 1977 film. I admit, I've gotten virtually evangelical about my love and adoration of this crazy film, so take my obsession with a grain of salt. Certainly a flawed film, but good God, what a creative and bonkers one. Anyways, a huge aspect of Exorcist II: The Heretic that I love is Ennio Morricone's soundtrack, which has gone in and out of print on CD over the years. I was overjoyed to see Jackpot come out with this nice-looking presentation (essentially replicates the original sleeve design of the '77 Warner Bros. Records release) and solid-sounding pressing - on my turntable, it sounds great, re-mastered from the original source tapes. And the black-and-orange swirl vinyl on this particular edition is a nice textural touch. Apparently this 2021 pressing is the first time this score has ever been reissued on vinyl, forty years later. The track listing is the same as the previous versions, though the track order is a little different. Pretty wild, but also reflective of what I mention in my old review regarding The Heretic finding a new appreciation and appraisal amongst fans of weird and left-field horror cinema.

Here's the older review of the Perseverance release :

It's been fascinating to watch the long-loathed sequel to 70s horror classic The Exorcist find a new, more appreciative audience online in recent years. I remember when, not too long ago, most folks wrote off John Boorman's batshit crazy Exorcist II as being one of the great all-time stinkers. Me, I thought they were all nuts. Had they even seen this film? There are sequences in this movie that rival classic Argento in terms of sheer nightmarish audacity. Now, I'm not going to suggest that Exorcist II is a classic - the film definitely has it's flaws, and parts of it border on being incoherent - but for fuck's sake, how can you hate that hard on a movie that features James Earl Jones as an African shaman dressed in a giant grasshopper costume? Exterminate all rational thought and come to Exorcist II expecting only madness, and you'll be pleased to find one of the nuttier horror films of the late 1970s.

And of course, the Morricone score doesn't hurt. The maestro brought a few elements over from the Italian gialli that he'd worked on prior to this, but he also brought some full-on wildness. With its almost schizophrenic mixture of styles, it's one of Morricone's most delirious scores, combining his signature orchestral beauty and use of choral voices with ecstatic African choirs and tribal percussion, lots of creepy kid choral groups that'll make your skin crawl, romantic chamber strings and gentle piano pieces, and eerie, ululating witchlike voices that drift throughout the score. The staccato strings on tracks like "Rite Of Magic" inject an unearthly tension into the proceedings, while the wistful "Regan's Theme" is a beautiful lullaby that belies the demonic horror lurking beneath the surface of the film. But the highlight of Morricone's Exorcist II score are to be found with two tracks: the first is the trippy, tribal frenzy of "Pazuzu", lashed by the crack of whips, a mesmeric hand-drum rhythm percolating beneath possessed children's voices and barked chanting; and the other is the absolutely demented, fuzz-encrusted garage-shock of "Magic And Ecstasy". That track might be my favorite Morricone composition ever. Imagine a bizarre cross between Goblin's creepzone prog rock and a totally berserk 60's-era garage rock band with wailing prepubescent choirs at the helm, and you're in the ballpark; oh, if only more of the score had been in the vein of that absurdly evil-sounding stomper. It is a great score overall though, definitely not what you might expect from Morricone, with chunks of it seemingly informed directly by what Goblin was doing around the time over in Italy.

As I've mentioned before, I highly recommend reading Jason Cook's excellent His Dark Exotica series at Popmatters.com, which gives you an excellent analysis of this killer score.