Director – Daniel E. Falicki, Screenplay – Warren Croyle & Daniel E. Falicki, Producers – Warren Croyle & Sheri Beth Dusek, Photography – Scott Baisden, Music – Tom Ashton, Creatures – Rotomation Works Dept. 4, Makeup Effects – Anne Cope. Production Company – Sector 5 Films.
Cast
Daniel E. Falicki (Richard Vanuk), David Higbee (Burgess Belle), Sheryl Despres (Janice), Joel Potrykus (Derek), Michael Cunningham (My Boy), Patrick Hendren (Jeremiah), Mike Roberts (Jeremiah’s Brother), Kara Joy Reed (The Dream Girl), James Harris (The Reverend), Sheri Beth Dusek (The Bar Queen), Faye Sills (Janice’s Daughter), Julianne Bouwens (The Reverend’s Wife), Mary C. Brown (My Boy’s Mother), Heath Scarbrough (My Boy’s Brother)
Plot
In Grand Rapids, Richard Vanuk operates as an exorcist. Richard is a mess and consumes a great deal of alcohol, while living in filthy conditions where he is behind on the rent. He drags himself together to go on to each exorcism assignment.
Accidental Exorcist was ninth film for director Daniel E. Falicki. I encountered Falicki a couple of years back with the mind-bogglingly bad Alien Implant (2017), a film so bad it topped my Worst Film of 2017 list. Daniel E. Falicki has also made GR30K (2010), Devils in the Darkness (2013), The Last Vampyre on Earth (2013), Awaken the Devil (2014), The Joe Show (2014), Alien Contact: Secret Societies (2015), Shadow World: The Haunting of Mysti Delane (2015), 3:33 (2015), And Hell Awaits (2016) and 13 Demons (2016).
I have found Daniel E. Falicki’s other films that I have watched all fairly awful. This meant I was surprised when it came to watching Accidental Exorcist and found it the most watchable of Falicki’s films yet. Possession and Exorcism Films
films have become so mired in clichés created by The Exorcist (1973) – of Catholic priests conducting rituals and the demon mouthing obscenities – that the genre has felt stuck in a rut that it has never moved out of for fifty years plus. However, Falicki does some interesting things with the genre.
Accidental Exorcist has the exorcist (also played by Daniel E. Falicki) as someone who consumes large quantities of alcohol and lives in filthy conditions in an apartment where he is behind on the rent. Indeed, when we see Falicki’s character, he has bruise-coloured bags under his eyes so heavy that you feel like he should be in hospital being treated for a major dose of consumption.
Daniel E. Falicki (also the film’s director and writer) as exorcist Richard Vanuk
In contrast to the titanic battle of good and evil we expect, Falicki’s exorcist delivers the demons with a conspicuous lack of ritual – merely tapping the possessee’s forehead and placing his hand over their eyes. He does dress as a Catholic priest at one point, although the film leaves some doubts as to whether he actually is one – there is quite a funny scene where he goes to deliver Patrick Hendren and his brother (Mike Roberts) keeps wanting a more traditional exorcism.
I wasn’t entirely sure if Falicki was treating Accidental Exorcist as a comedy or serious – it plays either way at different points. However, there are some rather funny scenes at times – like those of Falciki and the possessed Michael Cunningham sitting down to eat at a table amid Falicki delivering monologues comparing the mashed potato to Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977), before asking “Would you like some beans?” and Cunningham’s demon replying “No thanks, I’m fine,” in his deep possessed demon voice, all before the scene ends in a food fight.
It builds to a madly deranged climax after Falicki picks up a girl in a bar (Kara Joy Reed) and becomes possessed after going to bed with her. There is no real plot to the film – just the progression through a series of scenes where Falicki exorcises people. It isn’t great but I found it the most watchable of Daniel E. Falicki’s films.
