Movies - The Ninth Configuration

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	Movies - The Ninth Configuration

The Ninth Configuration, a.k.a. Twinkle, Twinkle, Killer Kane is an American-made film, released in 1980, directed by William Peter Blatty (most famous as the author of The Exorcist
.) It is often considered a cult film.

The film opens with a majestic Project Apollo rocket awaiting launch as a Jupiter-sized moon rises behind it. What follows is a bizarre film with about a group of shell-shocked military fallouts sent to a remote eastern-European-looking castle that has recently been appropriated by the American military as an insane asylum.

Stacy Keach, more recently of Titus and American History X
fame, portrays incoming psychologist Vincent Kane. His interactions with the patients and other military personnel are irrational to the point of profundity.

The frivolity of the first half of the film, which for the most part is written in the style of a comic farce, softens the viewer up for the shockers in the second half, as the central issues of the movie -- those of human suffering, sacrifice and faith -- drive the climax and denouement. A recently released DVD includes a number of alternate endings and deleted scenes that might have been, and opinion seems to be sharply divided as to the overall quality of the film.

Blatty once referred to The Ninth Configuration as the true sequel to The Exorcist and has stated that he intended the character of Captain Cutshaw to be the same astronaut that a sleepwalking Regan in The Exorcist warns, "You're going to die up there." In Configuration, Cutshaw mentions a fear of dying in space that is almost certainly a reference to Regan's line in the previous film. However, continuity between the films are debated by fans, as the characters were played by different actors and the astronaut in The Exorcist is not named by the credits (in the film's defense as a sequel, Detective Kinderman was also played by different actors in The Exorcist and The Exorcist III
).

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