This Leslie Nielsen Spoof is the Perfect Escape in These Dark Times
Free speech is becoming an increasingly precious commodity in the 2020s, thanks to the censoriousness of President Donald Trump and X (formerly Twitter) CEO Elon Musk. If you speak truth to power in these reactionary times, you risk being labeled as an “enemy of the people”, accused of peddling “fake news”, bullied into leaving your job, or harassed by an easily-triggered right-wing mob.
It was perhaps in this spirit that comedy director/writer Bobby Logan, the creative visionary behind the classic Leslie Nielsen spoof comedy Repossessed, issued this pseudo-ominous warning when I told him I was writing a retrospective on his masterpiece:
“Can’t wait to read it. And remember when you’re writing it that I’m a close relative of the Gambino family.”
Fortunately for me, Logan has exactly as much literal kinship with violent gangsters as he does any love for Trump—nil. (Logan and I have connected over the years over our mutual disdain for MAGA.) Fortunately for him, Repossessed, a comedic spoof on The Exorcist, is the perfect comedy antidote to these dreary times in which incipient fascism and ongoing ecocide are creating a reality far more terrifying than any horror movie. It is certainly my all-time favorite spoof, a comedy genre that I return to again and again. These things are subjective, to be sure, but I still argue that Repossessed has a higher ratio of funny-to-unfunny jokes than nearly any other spoof movie not helmed by Mel Brooks. (This is especially so if one is less than entirely sober while viewing.)
A Comedic Retelling Of The Exorcist
Repossessed, as the title indicates, imagines a hypothetical world in which a Regan MacNeil-esque protagonist is exorcised as a child only for the demon to retake her body as an adult. To be saved, her original exorcist, Father Jedediah Mayii (Nielsen), must team up with a young priest Father Luke Brophy (Anthony Starke) to save the woman from both the demon and a pair of manipulative televangelists based on Jim Bakker and Tammy Faye Messner (Ned Beatty and Lana Schwab).
One of the biggest draws in Repossessed is that Linda Blair, who played Regan in The Exorcist, assumes the role of her analog Nancy Aglet in this film. The other is that Nielsen is undoubtedly the most famous actor to ever become a mainstay of the spoof genre, with a legacy as the so-called “Lawrence Olivier of spoofs.” With such a potent one-two combination, any fan of classic horror and classic comedy should gravitate to Repossessed (despite its undeserved 0% score on critics’ aggregator Rotten Tomatoes).
Indeed, as Logan told Dread Central for this article, one of the main reasons he made this film is because he worked with Blair on his previous movie, the 1989 romantic comedy Up Your Alley.
“Just after meeting we became fast friends, and it was during the shooting of this low-budget film that I came up with the idea of doing a spoof of The Exorcist,” Logan said. “The first thing that hit me was the title Repossessed. Then the whole story hit me one night. Linda Blair is repossessed. She’s got a family and life is normal, that is until the devil comes back to screw up her life.”
Logan describes Blair as being a joy to work with, from doing the movie’s memorable cross-eyed effect herself to reenacting many classic moments from The Exorcist with a spoof-world twist.
“Working with Linda was an absolute joy,” Logan said. “She’s like a sister to me. She’s an incredibly intelligent and gifted actress. But above and beyond all that she’s just an absolute joy of a person. I’ve worked with her on several projects aside from Repossessed and all of them were wonderful times.”
Working With Leslie Nielsen
Logan had similar high praise for Nielsen—which, as a spoof fan, I found to be a great relief. While I understand that it is perilous for critics to hero-worship film stars, I doubt I could re-enjoy my favorite spoof movies like Airplane, the Naked Gun trilogy, Dracula: Dead and Loving It, Spy Hard, Wrongfully Accused, Scary Movie 3 and Scary Movie 4 if I learned Nielsen was a jerk behind the scenes.
This was definitely not the case.
“Working with Leslie was an absolute kick,” Logan said. “He was a man who for 40 years played dramatic roles solely, and all of a sudden this comedic genius breaks out. I think he was a closet comedian.” Nielsen famously walked around with a machine that produced fart sounds, leading to him putting the epitaph “Let ‘er rip!” on his tombstone. Logan got to encounter this device firsthand.
“He introduced me to his infamous fart machine and gave me one which I still use to this day,” Logan said. He declined to answer a question about how Repossessed stands next to the other entries in the pantheon of Nielsen spoofs, but added “I just know that Leslie loved the film and had a great time shooting it. That’s good enough for me.”
The Mind Behind Repossessed
One reason Repossessed works so well is that, in contrast with high-budget comedies that feel overly managed by producers and other business types, this movie is the vision of one man. Logan insisted on directing the script that he labored so hard to write.
“Since the project was my creation, and I wrote the film by myself, I wanted to direct it to make sure it was done the way I envisioned it,” Logan said. “Oftentimes writers will write a screenplay and then have another person come in as director who takes it in an entirely different direction. In other words, they fuck up the movie. I wanted to live by the sword or die by the sword.”
Certainly Repossessed captures that go-for-broke spirit. While writing this review, I’ve been careful to avoid spoiling any of the jokes, but I cannot resist mentioning that the reactionary religious con artists played by Beatty and Schwab meet a deliciously bizarre and grotesque fate. When asked why he chose to do this to those characters, Logan said, “They became what they deserved to become for eternity.”
Laughing At Yourself
What about Repossessed, though? Despite enjoying the movie myself, it was universally dismissed by critics upon release and even won a Razzie Award, the Golden Raspberry Award for Worst Original Song, “He’s Comin’ Back (The Devil!).” How does Logan feel about this outcome?
Unlike the men who rule the world today, Logan is able to laugh at himself.
“I love it,” Logan said. “A goof award is given to a goof film. Perfect.”
Categorized:Editorials
