Some time ago, Paul Schrader was hired to direct a prequel to “The Exorcist.” He filmed the script he was given and turned the finished product over to Warner Brothers, who were displeased with the results. Rather than release the film, they hired a new director to reshoot the entire picture in an unusually severe effort to recoup production costs and maximize profit.

Someday we may see the version of “Exorcist Beginning” directed by Mr. Schrader, a first-rate filmmaker. Today we can see the version directed by Renny Harlin, an intermittently diverting hack.

In any event, critics haven’t been allowed to see either version. Mr. Harlin’s wasn’t screened in advance, typically a sign that the movie is a fiasco, albeit a fiasco the studio desperately wants to succeed at the box office. And so I’m forced to trade the space that would have been devoted to reviewing “Exorcist Beginning” to discussing the circumstances of its release.

Well not exactly forced: Last Friday I reviewed “Alien vs. Predator” sight unseen as Fox declined to screen it for critics. I caught up with the movie on Sunday, adding my $10.25 to the nearly $40 million it grossed over the weekend, and was amused to discover that my “review” more or less stands as written, down to the completely invented descriptions of a fight sequence. Amusement at the mere idea of such a film had motivated my bogus write-up, but I ended up gaining far more pleasure from the movie itself than from my own good-natured condescension.

It is, of course, a howlingly silly thing, if not “obviously the best franchise smackdown ever,” then certainly the most enjoyable B-movie I’ve seen since “Torque.” Last weekend I saw a western by Anthony Mann, two films by Stan Brakhage, and “AVP.” The latter, strictly on its own terms, was not the worst.

As Hallway Berserkers go, this one’s a hoot, not least because the hallways reconfigure themselves in Escher-like convolutions every 10 minutes. I know few more delectable uses of Matrix-mo than the shot of a Facehugger leaping off a hieroglyphic ledge. The climactic rampage of the queen alien through a field of frozen whalebones is a fantastic image, as grand as anything in the movie it’s stolen from, “Jurassic Park.” Scary? No. Exciting? Sometimes. Fun? Extremely.

Yet the vast majority of critics ripped into the movie’s flesh with their vicious little mini-mouths. Was this truly one of the year’s worst, or were they all so pissed off at having to actually pay to see a movie that they lost all sense of humor? Lighten up, folks, it’s a rubber-suit monster movie! Those who whined about a betrayal of the “Alien” franchise’s integrity need to get a grip – I suggest practicing on the ancient Aztec combination lock that releases the Predator’s shoulder mounted laser bazookas from an Egyptian dry-ice box.