Five years after The Exorcist, William Peter Blatty had a screenplay nobody wanted. Columbia developed it and let it go. Universal turned it down, according to him, just because Columbia had passed on it first.

PepsiCo had money in Communist Hungary it could not get out. They could spend the funds inside the country or not at all. The company just needed somebody with a reason to work there.

Blatty put up half the budget and decided to direct it himself. PepsiCo covered the rest, on the condition that he shoot in Budapest.

THE NINTH CONFIGURATION (1980) puts a Marine psychiatrist inside a castle the Pentagon has commandeered as an asylum for officers who may or may not be pretending to be insane. One is staging Shakespeare for an all-dog cast. Another is convinced he is Superman. Stacy Keach is the doctor. Jason Miller, Father Karras from The Exorcist, is one of the patients.

Warner Bros., which Blatty had recently sued over his share of The Exorcist profits, took the distribution rights, recut it, and released it under a different title.

Then it won the Golden Globe for Best Screenplay.

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Release History:

February 29, 1980, Warner Bros. Test engagement in Los Angeles first, then wide in July, by which point Warner had recut it and retitled it Twinkle, Twinkle, Killer Kane, including some 70mm bookings.

1983. Blatty's complete approved version finally played in full, in New York, advertised as never having been shown anywhere else. It ran as a midnight movie alongside Pink Flamingos and Pink Floyd The Wall. The film had been in release for three years by then.

Five versions exist, running anywhere from 99 to 140 minutes. Blatty disowned all of them except his own 118-minute cut.