GARRETT VS. THE DEVILS

Garrett Cook watches the artsy, surrealistic blasphemy of THE DEVILS from Ken Russell. Is this film’s reputation gospel or is it all a heretical hoax?

In 17th-century France, Father Urbain Grandier’s protection of the city of Loudun from the corrupt Cardinal Richelieu is undermined by a sexually repressed nun’s accusation of witchcraft.

THE DEVILS (1971)

Directed by Ken Russell

Running time: 106 minutes

Every cult cinema fan has encountered at least one lost gem that they have lusted after for years. Often, after our years of longing and obsession, we see that film and why it stayed buried. The answer is frequently just that nobody cared enough about a mediocre genre film. Ken Russell’s The Devils was actively suppressed for being blasphemous and sexually prurient. It disappears and resurfaces periodically through bootlegs, re-releases and occasionally streaming. It is often spoken of in the same breath as Passolini’s Salo.

Here’s the thing though: while both of the films were made by flamboyant and transgressor gay directors of art films, one of them is by a director who ended up trampled to death in the street and it’s easy to tell which one. The Devils is blasphemous and controversial, yes but it’s not on a mission to match the ethical and spiritual decay of life under Mussolini but instead to create a sprawling, historic studio film that happens to be extremely perverse. Salo bored me to tears but The Devils is good.

Anchored by brilliant performances by Oliver Reed and Vanessa Redgrave, The Devils tells the story of the walled city of Loudon, a fortified and fairly independent city in France under the custody of a wealthy and decadent priest. It seems unlikely that a film can make you see the stature and nobility of a rich clergyman who uses his status to prey on young women but tragedy traffics in stature. We see this libertine find the love of his life and then we see him becoming a victim of jealousy, slander, lies and institutional greed and find in him a kindred spirit to John Proctor, the Puritan everyman that Norman Mailer’s The Crucible revolves around. In Reed- an actor tormented by alcoholism and rage that frequently held back his life and career- we find the power and dignity of a man who will not buy into lies and one who has genuinely come to his vision of God through struggle and error. 

Vanessa Redgrave as  a hunchbacked, venomous religious hypocrite of a nun is Shakespearean. Her sexual frustration and religious zeal are at war in her every act, a big, brazen, creepy performance but one that plays well off of the surprisingly disciplined Reed. Her feigned possession spreads through the convent as she wields her authority as a cudgel. Her own feelings for Reed and jealousy of the women which he seduced takes her to a madness tinged with ecstatic experience and she plays out dread paroxysms with the power of a Lady Macbeth and the madness she would play to perfection in the remake of Whatever Happened to Baby Jane. She tricks herself into monstrosity and villainy and becomes an accessory to foppish but ominous aristocrats that could have stepped out of a production of Jesus Christ Superstar. As the convent falls into chaos and more nuns exhibit signs of this “possession”, Redgrave’s repressed feelings become dangerous for Reed. The resolution must be seen to be believed.

The crazed nuns create sexy, ugly, horrific spectacles that have earned the film’s reputation. They are observed with the eye and temperament that could only have come from a director that directed both Altered States and several DH Lawrence adaptations. This is a combination of literary prestige, history and Eurotrash art like no other. It’s an indictment of fundamentalism in politics that still shows the beauty and power of coming to terms with one’s own vision of faith and life. This is streaming on Shudder and though it is not complete because Warner Brothers still refuses to release a cut with the famous crucifix masturbation scene (yes, really), this is essential weird cinema of the highest order. This is a lost cult film that you should find and make contact with as soon as you can. 

Garrett Cook is a Bizarro and horror author. He resides in Portland, Oregon with his partner of almost ten years. He has recently begun doing design work for TTRPGs.

PLEASE NOTE: The views and opinions of the staff of Memento Mori Ink do not necessarily represent those of Memento Mori Ink or Crystal Lake Publishing. Thank you for understanding.