THE NINTH CONFIGURATION

“A ‘Me Decade’ version of THE CABINET OF DR. CALIGARI” — Phil Nobile Jr., Birth Movies Death

William Peter Blatty’s 1980 film THE NINTH CONFIGURATION — one of his only two directorial efforts — boasts a truly impressive cast of nothing but hardline characters like Scott Wilson, Moses Gunn, Robert Loggia, Alejandro Rey, Neville Brand, Ed Flanders, Tom Atkins(!), Richard Lynch (!!) and Joe Spinell(!!!) and even THE EXORCIST’s Jason Miller alongside Stacy Keach as a military psychiatrist with a taste for unusual therapy programs.

Adjacent to Blatty’s “Exorcist” trilogy in tone, ambition and chutzpah, this hazy mind-shatterer intersects genre and arthouse in freaky ways. Overflowing with tangents covering “theology, morality, and the nature of human sanity and perception, it represents Blatty at full strength — something the world has learned not to take for granted.” (Nathaniel Thompson, TCM)