Headscratchers / The Exorcist III

• If Karras' body was possessed by the Gemini Killer, how was he able to get away to be put in the psychiatric ward? Wouldn't the authorities who would have come to take his body away after his death notice?
  • The Gemini Killer mentions climbing out of Karras' coffin, killing the old priest who was tending to it, and (by implication) putting the body of the priest into the coffin in his place. According to Dr. Temple, "Patient X" (Karras' body, Gemini's spirit) was founding wandering aimlessly around Washington DC before being institutionalized. The patient was never identified and there was no reason for anyone to think that it might be Father Karras.
• How does Detective Kinderman explain shooting a man bound in a straightjacket point blank in the head as self-defense to fellow law enforcement officers who probably wouldn't buy the demonic possession story? To an outside observer who doesn't believe in possession, the most rational explanation for the carnage in the cell of Patient X is that Kinderman mutilated Father Morning (who presumably died shortly after his final scene) and then shot an incapacitated mental patient.
  • It's not clear whether Father Morning died or not. If he survived, then he could vouch for Kinderman.
• Several sources state that the famed house from the first two films is not shown to prevent confusing audiences as it was destroyed at the end of Exorcist II: The Heretic. But isn't the house shown quite prominently in the opening credits as the camera goes down the street towards the stairs? Albeit blocked by a fence? (Minute 4).
  • William Peter Blatty quite intentionally made this film as though Exorcist II: The Heretic never existed. The discontinuities between parts II and III are due to the fact that II was completely ignored.