One of the more frequent robocalls I receive promises a “free” fabulous vacation as a thank-you for recently “staying at one of our resorts! Press ‘1’ to be connected to an operator …”

Even if I had stayed at any resorts of late, which I have not, I’m smart enough not to fall for this scam. My teenage daughter, on the other hand? She fell for it. She pressed “1.”

I tell you this because, God love her, my daughter is basically Regina, the main character of Terror at Red Wolf Inn. As played with total golly-gee-whiziness by Linda Gillen (Black Rain), Regina is a college student majoring in advanced gullibility. In her dormitory mail slot lands a letter informing her she’s won a trip to the site of this film’s title. Despite having entered no sweepstakes, she gleefully accepts the sketchy invitation — made even more suspect by its must-leave-today catch — and celebrates her good fortune by exclaiming to all fellow dorm residents within earshot, “I’m a winner, everybody! I won something!” (Alas, if only the prize were a brain-to-mouth filter.)

The Red Wolf Inn is a quaint bed-and-breakfast establishment run by the kind, doddering old couple Henry (Arthur Space, The Bat People) and Evelyn Smith (Mary Jacobson, Audrey Rose). Per the inn’s guests already there, Evelyn is “the world’s greatest cook,” to which Regina replies, absent of irony or sarcasm, “I’m the world’s greatest eater!” (Stupidity loves company, as a guest played by The Centerfold Girls’ Janet Wood introduces herself to Regina with a smile and these three words: “I’m a model!”)

Evelyn’s secret recipe? Well, it’s hardly a secret when the poster gives it away, not that a delicate touch ever was listed on the film’s call sheet. The surprise of Terror at Red Wolf Inn is not its cannibalistic theme, but how much of this B-grade obscurity will remind you of a certain drive-in classic that arrived two years later: The Texas Chain Saw Massacre. Like Tobe Hooper did on that terrifying touchstone, director Bud Townsend (Nightmare in Wax) milks his movie’s most unsettling moments out of its dinner scenes, with rib-chewing, soup-slurping, lip-licking, corn-on-the-cob-smacking mastication depicted in revolting close-ups.

Fish is also on the menu, albeit when the Smiths’ weirdo grandson, Baby John (John Neilson, Sharks’ Treasure) unleashes some serious rage on a baby shark he’s reeled in. After hitting the life out of it on the beach, he turns to Regina and offers the only logical explanation for such a bonkers display of unjustified animal cruelty: “I think I love you.” Being as dumb as the piece of wood Baby John beat Baby Shark against, yes, of course she’s smitten.

The events within The Terror at Red Wolf Inn may not exist on our plane of reality, but I’m glad the film does; it’s a bit different from the horror norm, including by having its token black character (future Oscar nominee Margaret Avery, The Color Purple) be the smartest character. Although it possesses a devilish sense of humor, it is not a comedy, much less a parody as some critics have claimed. Now, if its innards contained the literal wink at the audience that closes the credits, that’d be a different story. As is, Townsend’s spookhouse of a picture straddles the Hollywood hagsploitation efforts that had been in vogue and the teen slashers that were about to be, and gives you a hearty slap on the back to let you know it’s all in good fun. And to quote Regina, “I love parties!” —Rod Lott

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An alcohol-bloated Richard Burton (The Medusa Touch) is Father Lamont, who leaves his father’s junk empire in Watts to perform meandering exorcisms in Latin America. When his latest dispossession goes up in smoke, quite literally, he’s summoned to the Vatican not for a swift punishment — probably a transfer to a boys’ home in Wisconsin — but instead to find out the truth about a disgraced Father Merrin (Max von Sydow, Never Say Never Again) from the first film.

Regan MacNeil (Linda Blair, Airport 1975), who’s bloated as well — possibly from cocaine — is back also, of course. We learn that since her exorcism she now loves to tap-dance in a shirt that showcases the underside of her breasts, usually before her sessions at Dr. Gene Tuskin’s (Louise Fletcher, 1987’s Flowers in the Attic) very John Boorman-esque — i.e., lots of sharp glass and curved mirrors — research clinic. There, even though she’s buried the events of her brutal exorcism deep in the past, the damn scientific curiosity of Tuskin brings ol’ Pazuzu back to the forefront once again.

While all that is going on, Lamont goes to Africa to hang out with James Earl Jones (Allan Quatermain and the Lost City of Gold), who sits lonesomely in a throne, fully clad in a hilarious life-sized locust costume, complete with a big bug-eyed mask.

Director John Boorman’s clunker of a continuation — hot on the well-booted Exterminator heels of 1974’s Zardoz — is something people mostly watch either out of sick curiosity or general masochism. There are a few Exorcist II: The Heretic apologists out there, and every single one I’ve met is a chunky dude in a fake Tommy Bahama shirt who’ll corner you at a party, explaining with frothing reasoning why you — and most of cinematic academia in general — are morally wrong in your tepid dislike of the sequel.

But, for once, most people are right: With the exception of Ennio Morricone’s typically gorgeous score, there’s not much to recommend here. Each progressive scene sillier than the last, Exorcist II manages to turn Satan from a monstrous representation that is Legion to a confusing swarm of African locusts with a taste for yummy psychic powers and tasty fields of grain. Obviously, whatever “good film” that was supposedly here got lost in a parade of big egos and bad ideas.

In the special features, even Linda Blair vehemently admits that this isn’t the film she signed up to do, but, then again, she starred in Roller Boogie. That ought to tell you something right there.  —Louis Fowler

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