The Ninth Configuration

While the Vietnam War goes on, a military psychiatric unit is set up in a castle in the woods. The inmates are officers: one wants to stage Hamlet with dogs, one says he saw God in space, one does not speak at all. A new chief psychiatrist arrives, Colonel Kane. He does not argue with the patients, he joins them. Then it emerges that the question of who is ill was asked wrongly from the first day. The real subject is not madness but goodness: if the universe is meaningless, how do you account for a person sacrificing himself. The bar sequence at the end reduces that question to a single fight, and at that point the film becomes something else entirely. William Peter Blatty wrote and directed, his first film as director. The source is his own 1978 novel, itself a rewriting of his 1966 book Twinkle, Twinkle, Killer Kane. Stacy Keach plays Kane and Scott Wilson plays the astronaut Cutshaw. With no major studio willing to fund it, Blatty put up half of the four million dollar budget himself and persuaded PepsiCo to supply the rest. It won best screenplay at the 1980 Golden Globes. Blatty counted it as the second part of his trilogy of faith, after The Exorcist and before The Exorcist III. Who it is for: anyone who likes strange, philosophical films that refuse a genre. Who it is not for: anyone wanting consistency. The tone swings between comedy and dread, the middle is scattered, and the ending loses some viewers completely.