Creatures of War # 20: The Ninth Configuration (1980)

The Exorcist, Faith, Space, and The Vietnam War

The Exorcist

The Exorcist III and The Ninth Configuration share several common actors including Scott Wilson. Image from Filmgrab

I got a “promotion” at work¹, saw Wolf Man and Conclave², I’m healthy, TikTok died (then got resurrected) but I deleted it anyway, David Lynch passed on, LA burns, Oscar noms suck, Russia still won’t say they shot that plane down, and the US elected a tyrannical moron. Onwards and upwards.

I meant to return to form with a truly trashy Nazi-zombie movie next, but I’ve got some thoughts rattling around my head about The Ninth Configuration (1980). The film, directed by William Peter Blatty and adapted from his novel of the same name, follows former US Marine Corps member Colonel Kane as he attempts to rehabilitate other ex-military men near the end of the Vietnam War. Kane takes a special interest in Cutshaw, an astronaut who never made it to space.

I’m gonna make a bold statement here so don’t run screaming: I didn’t enjoy The Exorcist until recently and actually favored the poorly-received sequel. The first time I saw The Exorcist it was at the recommendation of my horror-movie-hating father. I watched it way too young and was unimpressed as my father had promised me “the scariest movie ever”. Over several subsequent rewatches, The Exorcist is a perfect (and very scary) movie, but perfection can’t buy my favor. The Exorcist II may be a bad Exorcist movie, but it has a charm that resonated with me immediately. I put off seeing The Exorcist III until I warmed up to the original, but once I saw it I immediately dubbed it one of my favorite horror movies ever. The Ninth Configuration blends the strangeness and style of The Exorcist sequels and turns it into a weirdly comedic war drama. This isn’t a horror movie in the traditional sense, but I can’t say it didn’t disturb me.

The Ninth Configuration is only slightly supernatural in nature. I’d argue it’s really an extended ghost story, but I’m limiting spoilers here. Most of the paranormal comes from the film’s small connection to The Exorcist. There are two versions of the novel, Twinkle, Twinkle, "Killer" Kane!, and The Ninth Configuration. The original has nothing to do with The Exorcist and is said to be funnier than the rewritten version. The Ninth Configuration is darker and fully fleshes out the story of the astronaut who a possessed Regan in The Exorcist claims will “die up there”. Beyond the thin plot thread between the two films, The Ninth Configuration does feel like a trial run for The Exorcist III. For only having directed two movies, Blatty has a shocking eye for horror movie creation. There’s a scene in Configuration that felt so Exorcist that I could probably argue the character is being possessed by a demon. The Ninth Configuration may only have an undercurrent of the demonic, but it’s a hell of a force.

Faith, Space

Image from Wikipedia

A main tie between The Exorcist films and The Ninth Configuration is how they play with faith. Kane is a religious man while Cutshaw denies the existence of a higher power or afterlife. Throughout the film, Kane attempts to prove that human kindness is too pure to be random chance. He represents the idea that the human race could not have possibly formed all by itself but is instead part of a divine plan. Cutshaw resents this idealogy and continuously asks Kane to demonstrate a concrete example of pure self-sacrifice. Kane cannot think of one. Kane instead asks Cutshaw why he didn’t go to space. Why back down at the last minute? Cutshaw refuses to answer him.

The truth is that both men are using religion to hide their real fears. Kane is hiding from his past deeds as a soldier, insisting that all this suffering must be part of a greater picture. He uses God to disguise his guilt. Cutshaw doesn’t believe in God, but that’s what frightens him. What if he goes to space and it’s empty? What if he is alone and when he dies he’ll be met with nothing but blackness? Cutshaw uses God to conceal his fear of the unknown.³ In the end, both men prove their point. Kane demonstrates the existence of true self-sacrifice, and Cutshaw shows Kane that the human race is ultimately cruel.

“I tried, sir. See the stars? So cold, so far, and so very lonely. Oh, so lonely. All that space... just... empty space. And so far from home. I've circled round and round this house, orbit after orbit. Sometimes I wonder what it'd be like never to stop, and circle alone up there forever. And what if I got there - got to the moon - and couldn't get back? Sure, everyone dies, but I'm afraid to die ALONE, so far from home. And if there's no God, then that's really, REALLY alone.”

The Ninth Configuration film was made about 6 years before the Challenger disaster and I wonder if Blatty watched Challenger and thought of Cutshaw and Regan and “You’re going to die up there.” NASA knew about the possibility of an O-ring failure and launched anyway. I have a hard time forgiving such an oversight, even as someone who is nowhere near a rocket scientist. In this age of televised disasters, few incidents make me as sick as Challenger. I was just a distant nightmare to my parents in 1986, but I’ve heard several stories of people who watched the explosion live. I still won’t watch SpaceX launches out of fear I’ll see something similar. I won’t go into a whole anti-Musk segment, but his bravado makes me worried for the future of space exploration. As we near the anniversary of Challenger, I don’t find it difficult to agree with Cutshaw’s fear of space and his skepticism of how disaster fits into a divine plan.

The Vietnam War

A map I made for my father

I have a limited personal connection to The Vietnam War, but my father moved to Vietnam about 8 years ago. He has no Vietnamese heritage and only speaks English, so I’m aware that seems a little weird. I won’t claim the man knows all there is to know or is very culturally sensitive, but I enjoy the stories he tells me from the other side of the world. After The Vietnam War, the city of Saigon was renamed Ho Chi Minh City, but according to my dad people in the south still call it Saigon. He is unsure whether this is in defiance, or just out of familiarity. I haven’t been to Vietnam yet, but I have spent some time in the neighboring countries. I don’t enjoy traveling as much as my dad, but Southeast Asia is very beautiful. I also saw some remnants of wars that I have a hard time unseeing. There’s a thread here somewhere about the prevalence of the use of “Saigon” after the war and Kane’s struggle to get back to his pre-war self, but I’m too tired to pull on it.

A beautiful 1966 map of Vietnam

We do not have time to get into the intricacies of The Vietnam War and post-war Vietnam, but I did want to touch on this filmmaker’s connections to it. William Peter Blatty is a former member of the US Air Force and United States Information Agency. I won’t get too much into that either as it’s a rabbit hole, but let’s just say the man is probably well familiar with war propaganda. For all The Ninth Configuration says, I can’t say I know for sure what it’s trying to say. Is it pro-religion or critical of it? Is it pro-military or anti-war? I have these same questions about Blatty himself, and I find myself void of a clear answer. At the end of the day, it doesn’t matter. The Ninth Configuration is a very stylish, deeply personal, and borderline masterful movie. It’s also incredibly scattered, inconsistent, and strange. It creates as many enigmas as it tries to solve, and as much as I try to nail it down, I just can’t crucify it. It’s a movie that begs to be understood, even as it throws all sense out the window. The more I tried to dig into Blatty as a person, the more I saw that The Ninth Configuration is a perfect vessel to understand the man: you can’t, and I can accept that.

What’s next?

I am screaming from the tallest mountain to recommend The Ninth Configuration. The power of Christ compels you to. I will give a content warning for sexual assault though. I’m not sure what I’ll do for the next edition, but probably something trashy. There are only so many actually good movies I can write about in a row. I may have to break the cycle by watching Sky Sharks (2020), a real movie that actually exists about Nazi-flying-zombie sharks.

Double Feature ideas:

1. The Exorcist III (1990)

2. Shutter Island (2010)

3. Personal Shopper (2016)

Bye!

1. They realized I wasn’t bluffing about quitting. No pay increase so is that really a promotion???? I will no longer have a job where I get cussed out once a week though!

2. Really liked it. I was so ready to be bored, but actually it was very exciting.

3. I am not religious for the record, but I do live in a very conservative Christian area. This comes with some unexpected quirks like everything being closed on Sunday. God forbid I just want some takeout on my day off.