This film, this magnificent work of art, is madness and lunacy poured straight onto the screen. Impossible to tear your eyes away. A lot of what I see in these reviews is that this movie should get more recognition and respect than it does, and I will gladly through my hat into the ring in support of that view.

Ken Russell's inflamed, flamboyant masochistic fantasies belong to their own sub-genre: nihilistic mini-epics designed to shock and repulse. Of course, it isn't Russell's thing to simply be shocking--he's much too tickled by his own blasphemies to stop there. The filmmaker wants to transcend cinematic controversy by desecrating everything mainstream audiences hold sacred. I imagine the crowds seeing "The Devils" in the early 1970s left the theater beaten and bowed (or, perhaps morbidly amused), most-assuredly talking about the director's visual conception of the material rather than the story or the performances. Too bad, as Oliver Reed and Vanessa Redgrave are boldly compelling here, oozing sex and hysterical charisma as a whore-loving Catholic priest and a disfigured nun in 17th century France. In the town of Loudun, Father Grandier runs roughshod over the sniveling, power-seeking Baron de Laubardemont, who seeks to discredit the popular priest with an accusation of witchcraft by exploiting a confession of lust from the hunchbacked Sister Jeanne. Soon, the Baron and a lunatic 'exorcist' have all the nuns in the convent believing they are bewitched, leading to the film's most infamous sequence, a mass sham exorcism (naked nuns writhing in lust, slavering at the mouth and desecrating a statue of Christ). It is to Russell's credit that his actors do not come off looking foolish (except for an earlier scene with Redgrave, horrified at the news that Grandier has taken a wife, nearly shoving an entire rosary in her mouth); however, the film is monstrously ugly in a monotonous way that Russell probably didn't intend. The recklessly brazen, freakishly surreal images (startling at first) eventually no longer highlight individual sequences. Russell doesn't necessarily allow the picture to get away from him as much as he lets it become a nightmarish blur, one big heap of horrors. Alas, "The Devils" is no longer disturbing because the audience is systemically benumbed by the director's check-list of atrocities. By the time we get to an elongated public burning, our thoughts may have moved on to other matters...such as, "Just how did Russell talk his actors into doing these things?" ** from ****

Directed by Ken Russell (Women in Love, Tommy), I had heard about this film a little bit in the past, particularly that it was controversial, and I knew the leading actor, then it appeared in the book 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die, so I was definitely going to watch it. Basically set in 17th Century France, priest Cardinal Urbain Grandier (Oliver Reed) and has radical political and religious notions and immoral sex life, these have earned him many enemies, including Cardinal Richelieu (Christopher Logue) and his power-hungry entourage who seek to destroy his regime and take over. A group of nuns appear, Grandier's rivals are feeding on the mass hysteria being caused, as they appear to be "bewitched" by him, they are attempting to set him up as a warlock in control of this devil- possessed nunnery, the mother superior Sister Jeanne (Vanessa Redgrave) is particularly sexually obsessed with him. Mad witch- hunter Father Pierre Barre (Michael Gothard) is brought in to gather evidence against Grandier, ready for the big trial against him, he refuses to confess to being in league with Satan, or to renounce his "heretical" views, he undergoes terrible tortures and is finally defeated, being burned at the stake. Also starring Dudley Sutton as Baron De Laubardemont, Max Adrian as Ibert, Gemma Jones as Madeleine, Murray Melvin as Mignon, Georgina Hale as Philippe, Brian Murphy as Adam and Graham Armitage as Louis XIII. Reed gives a great performance as the French priest with a sexual appetite and trying to keep control from manipulators, and Redgrave is almost as good as the humpbacked nun sexually hungry for him, censorship issues over the years for the release of this film in many countries have caused running times to vary, there are many sexual scenes, but more than anything disturbing moments that are anti-religious, sacrilege and almost heresy, making this film shocking, repulsive, hysterical, compelling and fascinating in all measures, an interesting controversial historical drama horror. Oliver Reed was number 78 on The 100 Greatest Movie Stars, and he was number 26 on The 50 Greatest British Actors. Very good!

I saw this movie when it was first released with all the hoopla and X rating and I wanted to like it. I saw it six more times hoping that all the hype about Ken Russell's photographic genius would sweep me up and make me think this was an iconic piece of cinema. God knows we heard a lot of people say he was brilliant after Women In Love. But time does something to us with perspective and vision. And as beautiful as I think this film was shot... I just couldn't get past how indulgent and obtrusive Ken Russell's camera was to the story. He was so obsessed with creating a visual that story is lost.. emotion is lost.. we are completely extracted from anything that would make us feel "involved." I love Vanessa Redgrave and I think the role she had in this was brilliant if it had been in the hands of someone who made you care rather than someone more concerned about cinematic trickery. I hope at some point in time another director attempts to tell this story in a way that pulls us into it rather than pushes us out of it.