And then, yes;

Sat by the bus-stop in the October drizzle, and a young lad with a mullet and a t-shirt says Your Mother Sucks Cocks In Hell, he's pointing a finger at me, he's saying it was ridiculous, it was an embarrassment, that Harlin catastrophe, 90 minutes a direst drivel, a blight on the Good Name of that flick about a young lass does herself with a crucifix.

Ridiculous, he spits, all green chunks an' reekin a delirious blasphemies.

And what The Duke says is baby chill now baby, listen now;

No-one, not Schrader nor Harlin nor the blessed Buddha born again in downtown LA, no-one could take this story, i.e, what happened back in the day before Father Merrin pulled up outside yonder homestead in the streetlight glow, no-one could take this tale as is and make it anything less than inherently ridiculous.

No-one, baby, sayin no-one.

Cause Harlin's flick and Schrader's flick, they both got the same plot buried neath the rubble.

To wit;

Father Merrin, tormented on account of a horrendous choice he made in the presence of the Nazi's during WW2, he's now shown up in Africa, kinda empty round the faith-glands, investigating a church that's been uncovered by a buncha archaeological types, church shouldn't be there, by all rights, and yet there it is, clear as day.

Both flicks got a buncha stuff goin on about how once the church is opened, all sortsa Hellish monstrosities start prowling round the corners of the frame, none more Hellish than the CGI hyenas which we were all led to believe were Harlin-specific inventions, and then no, here they are, fucking ridiculous as ever, growling pixellated on yonder hills.

In Harlin's version what happens is a nurse at the local hospital turns out to be a possessed demon from the guts of Satan's balls, and all the while the local Zulu are getting set for a face-off gainst the British army.

In Schrader's version, it's a patient at the hospital who gets all Satanic in the kidneys, and all the while the local Zulu are getting set for a face-off gainst the British army.

The difference is the tone, see, how the gibberish is approached.

Harlin decided the thing to do was approach it as an action epic, so plenty gore flung left and right, plenty demented set-pieces, have the priests get into the church via a hole in the ceiling, all the better for shots of folks dangling on ropes etc.

It was a schlock-fest with occasional moments of half-arsed "philosophical" banter.

Schrader decided no, what it is, is a drama about the Human Condition, so plenty discussions between characters concerning Why Does God Let This Happen, plenty anguished glances, have the priests wander into the church via the front door, since who can discuss Existentialism when dangling from a damn rope thirty feet from the ground?