The Devils (1971) with Oliver Reed and Vanessa Redgrave

It's overlong.

Glenda refused to appear in it because she had already done too many movies with strange men fingering her vulva etc.

A lot of the sets resemble a tiled railway lavatory.

Aldous Huxley wrote this overlong piece on drugs and he foolishly forbade an editor to cut it to a sensible length.

It contains scenes with the intense Michael Gothard (who has a fan here on DL) and I believe committed suicide.

Oliver Reed is thuggish and is incapable of rendering any of the intellect that Huxley imagines.

Poor Vanessa agreed to appear in this farrago because she needed the money to fund the Socialist Revolutionary Workers Campaign to free Palestine (or something like that).

The cast also includes that long-nosed homosexual creature named Murray Melvin (who looks like Ernest Thesiger combined with Edith Sitwell.

It was directed by a man who made one good movie (Women In Love) but all the others are like a child spreading its faeces across the floor and walls etc.

One of Ken Russell’s finest.

R1 Dang. Now I don't want to watch it. That is pretty cold. I thought Max von Sydow was the long nosed guy from the trailer.

Saw it years ago - big scandal like all Ken Russell's movies - which I love. Much less scandalous and daring but infinitely more interesting is the series Russell made for the BBC on artists and musicians. Particular favorite was the one on Dante Gabriel Rossetti and the PreRaphaelites. Oliver Reed was excellent in that.

[quote] Russell made for the BBC on artists and musicians

Them memory of them is better than actually watching them again. Russell had a real talent of finding prosaic locations (in ordinary places such as a quarry or a bog or a railway station) and making them look atmospheric on screen.

And had a good dress designer as well. I think he actually even tried a biography of Ralph Vaughan Williams.

[quote] that long-nosed homosexual creature

This movie has two of them. The older of the two is Max Adrain who starred in the original production of Candide which had Bernstein collaborating with about 8 different scriptwriters and lyricists

P.S. Oh dear I misspelled Max Adrian as 'Max Adrain'.

He livened up lots of things on both suites of the Atlantic (and added a touch of weirdness)

Vanessa Redgrave is eerie and fantastic in it.

As for more about the film, I hardly remember.

Who are you going to the ball as, Paw-lee?

A hot mess as I recall it. Sordid, unconvincing. Russell also directed the Boy Friend, Lisztomania, Tommy, Altered States, Valentino, each of which has its laudable moments. I will never forgot Glenda Jackson in Russell's Music Lovers, about Tchaikovsky, naked in a private railway carriage with Richard Chamberlain) jabbering and throwing herself from side-top-side in nymphomaniacal glee. Chamberlain is aghast as well he might be with la Jackson's twat on display over how many takes. As some of you may or may not recall Ann-Margret got an Oscar nomination for Tommy.

Bancroft & Robards

Oliver Reed is too ugly to inflame the passions of one hundred nuns.

I wonder if Aldous Huxley was trying to make a point in the potboiler original story 'The Devils of Loudun'? His family were scientists and he dabbled in philosophical mysticism so was he saying that Catholics are preternaturally crazy?

His best work, 'Brave New World', prophesied a lot of things about our current, sybaritic, useless, drug-loving society.

Bancroft & Robards may have excited the New York theatregoers with their live histrionics and occasionally projecting spittle onto the front-row audience.

But Oliver Reed is NOT an actor, he's a physical presence. He was satisfactory in 'Women Love' but he looks like an ox in everything else.

Vanessa is a genuine thespian but she has little to do in this except roll her eyes and look as demented as possible.

Wonderful film. So many stunning visuals and naughty, naughty Nuns. Oliver is a force. Adore Russell. Adore this film.

Yes. There is already a Datalounge thread on that young suicidal actor with the high cheekbones and nice buttocks—

I for one can't comprehend why the Vatican would find this film so offensive.

Kidding. It's 2 solid hours of reading the Catholic church for filth. Redgrave is on fire.

I prefer my nuns nasty, r14.

Those bathroom-tiled sets were by Derek Jarman

I love that movie, r17!

I just finished watching The Devils. Here are my thoughts:

Just like R12 alluded to, Oliver Reed is not attractive enough in this movie (or any really) to convert an entire convent of nuns. However, he is acting the hell out his speeches.

Vanessa Redgrave has far too little to do or look in this movie. I never really understood why she wanted to ruin everything. But damn she pulls it off.

The supporting cast is quite good. Murray Melvin as the priest was my personal favorite. His look and he had a good payoff at the end. I did not know the others. Michael Gothard is a little over the top IMHO, and Dudley Sutton does a great job.

This movie would have been a great film if they were to cut out a lot of nudity and "shock value" scenery that really do not matter towards the plot.

As far as my Presbyterian upbringing, I had to fast forwarded a few scenes that really got to me.

This movie will sit with me for a while for sure.

Imagine if Robert Shaw, Albert Finney, Richard Burton, or Paul Scofield was Father Grandier. That would be interesting.

^ Serious actors like them wouldn't appear in a Ken Russell film.

Russell specialised in cartoon-movies.

Besides, I think Huxley wrote the story as a damning satire, that the Catholic Church was based on megalomaniacal clergy manipulating the stupid people.

Pretentious drivel, as usual.

well, he got that right

I wanna see the damn screen test!

The late, great (and gay) Peter Maxwell Davies's score is out of this world.

Ken Russell directed uber-pretentious William Hurt in Altered States (not a bad movie either). Hurt drove Russell crazy with his interminable prattling on about whatever weird subject took his fancy. He would never shut up and Russell took to wearing headphones on set to block him out.

When Russell learned that Hurt was dating deaf actress Marlee Matlin, he said 'that's a marriage made in heaven'.

Savage Messiah

Perhaps a piece of...Mahler.

OP I was raised Catholic and I love it. It's not about demons; it's really just about sexual repression and mass hysteria. There are disturbing things that happen in it, but it's really not supernatural.

What about the movie was so troublesome that you, as a Presbyterian, had to fast forward it, OP?

I’ve watched it a few times but each time I get frustrated with either the video quality or the movie itself. I just wish Warner would get the FUCK over themselves and release it in HD. If that’s even what the hold-up is—who knows, it might just fan speculation, that Warner is so scandalized by this movie and too ashamed to re-release it, uncut. When it plays on The Criterion Channel, it’s in “standard definition,” which actually looks WORSE than DVD quality. I wish they wouldn’t even bother.

I liked Crimes of Passion enough (and own the soundtrack on vinyl!).

We sigh for him

And cry for him

And we would gladly die for him

That certain thing called the boy friend

Ugh, R34. Why.

The censorship of this movie makes for interesting reading OP. You could do worse than track down anything by Mark Kermode who has championed the movie through the years. There is a fuller version with the restored Rape of Christ sequence which was shown in London a few years ago. The problem of that version being released seems to lie with Warner Brothers.

R33 I have attached the link where I watched it. I cheated and found it online. Oliver Reed would have drank his proceeds away anyway...

The parts that really got me were the degradation of the crucifix by the nude nuns, the douching of Redgrave while everyone watches, and there were a few "shock images" I did not like. I do not handle that stuff well. It is a sensibility of mine.

[quote] Why.

Sandy Wilson refused to hand over the rights to Julie Andrews so they were forced to make a replica called 'Throughly Modern Millie'.

Part of his oeuvre, r35. Whether ya like it or not.

Even if Warner Bros. doesn’t want to release the uncut version (again, LAME, WB), they could at least provide the HD scan of the edited cut that Criterion sometimes shows.

The version I linked above was 1 hr and 53 minutes. I think it is the uncut version.

I found one that was 1 hr and 46 minutes.

Isadora Duncan...The Biggest Dancer in the World

The TRULY uncut version is not available anywhere. It’s been shown a few times at one-off festivals since 2004. The running time is, as best I can tell, somehow unknown. But it’s still longer than what is today advertised as being the “uncut” version.

The initial UK release had the most shocking stuff (rape of Christ, etc.) excised before it hit screens in 1971; the US release had even more trimmed. The version that was released on DVD by the BFI is that UK release, so any stream or DVD you encounter that might be advertised as “uncut” is merely the UK release.

The TRULY uncut version isn’t available anywhere currently, though the BFI is all for it, and is open to releasing it on Criterion. It’s the nerds at Warner Bros who say no.

Some scenes in Russell movies stay with you forever: the nude wrestling scene in Women in Love, the scene when they drain the pond and discover the drowned newlyweds entwined at the bottom, the scene of Glenda Jackson rolling around nude on the floor of the train in Music Lovers, tormenting Richard Chamberlain.

Ten years before Russell made "The Devils", a brilliant Polish movie was made about the same case, but it is set in the period after Father Grandier was burned at the stake, when another priest is sent to the convent to deal with the continuing demonic possession among the nuns. It's called "Mother Joan of the Angels" and is completely different in tone and style from "The Devils". It's based on a Polish novel, not the Huxley book and the John Whiting play. I wonder if Michael Cacoyannis had seen the Polish movie before he mounted his Broadway production of the play, because Anne Bancroft looks extraordinarily like the Polish actress who played Joan in the movie, Lucyna Winnicka. Her performance, and that of Mieczyslaw Voit as the priest are among the greatest I've ever seen.

The Devils was shocking and for that reason quite captivating for 1971. I went back to the theater 2 or 3 times to see it because I couldn't believe my eyes. I'm not sure how it would fare today but I disagree with those who say Oliver Reed was not good enough for it. Reed had a intense sexual presence that worked very well in The Devils. You could see how a bunch of repressed nuns would be driven to lust for this bull of a man and how the powers that be would have to destroy him for what he was. I would love to see it again.

The movie is a hoot. Can't believe there's not more love here for Oliver Reed who is a sexy beast in this and declaims his lines with virile intensity. Sexy he is. Vanessa is brilliant. And yes - the production by Derek Jarman, the score by Peter Maxwell-Davies. Murray Melvin. There is a deep gay sensibility going on which has always made me wonder about Ken Russell himself. I think it's fabulous, and even, in the end, quite chilling.

R47 No his hair is terrible in The Devils

I made a very inconspicuous uncredited appearance early in the film. And yes, I looked fabulous

R46 after viewing the movie for a third time, did you FINALLY believe your eyes?

R48 Michael Gothard committed suicide because he was sick of people asking him 'Are you Melina Mercouri?'.

R1 is a brilliant DL review LOL but don't listen to him. It's a wonderful movie. "Long nosed homosexual creature" indeed 😀

More 70s straight male garbage - graphic violence and sex and (shocking!) subverting religious imagery does not make a good, or even an interesting movie to anyone with more than a jr. high-school level mentality. Pure trash. Please - read a good book or do some housework instead.

R53 But it does Rose, it does make a brilliant, classic film.

^^^^ IQ of an eggplant.

[quote] Please - read a good book instead.

What do you suggest, R53, The Bible?

No one has exuded more sex appeal than Oliver Reed in his prime.

" Reed had a intense sexual presence that worked very well in The Devils. You could see how a bunch of repressed nuns would be driven to lust for this bull of a man"

Absolutely, If a man like me could drive anglican nuns mad with desire, i can only imagine what a smouldering hunk of masculinity could do to a bunch of even more repressed catholics

[quote] No one has exuded more sex appeal than Oliver Reed in his prime.

Seriously? I can think of at least dozen men from his heyday who were more sexually charismatic and orders-of-magnitude more handsome. He was a moose.

Is this the one where she shoves a cross up her hairy front bum?

I think that was Helen Lawson as Maria in "The Sound of Music" before production was shut down and Julie replaced her.

The play The Devils is actually a great work, it has parallels to the Salem Witch trials. The movie isn't a great adaptation of it.

Ken Russell's Crimes Of Passion is my fave of his. It's ridiculous and has a drugged up Anthony Perkins trying to kill Kathleen Turner with a razor studded vibrator.

Also, the incredible Lynda Day George was in the Broadway cast of The Devils. Such an outstanding actress....

Thank you for that video clip. R62. Whenever I see her name I always confuse her with the hideous Susan George, whom certain hetero male movie buffs always seem to have a thing for (god only knows why).

Lynda Day George really *felt* her lines.

I had no idea, r62! It's her one and only Broadway credit.

[quote] The play The Devils is actually a great work, it has parallels to the Salem Witch trials

And I suspect Huxley wrote his 1952 book for the same reason as Arthur Miller wrote The Crucible. They're both allegories for the group hysteria of the 1950s McCarthy witch hunt hysteria.

Urbain Grandier was set up by Cardinal Richelieu for political reasons rather than religious reasons. There were NO witches, NO nuns in hysteria and NO nuns masturbating with crucifixes.

And NO reason for adolescent Ken Russell to make this pulp movie which is 98% sensation and 2% intellect.

R65 You're so bwainy.

no, oliver it wasn't too much, more pleas

All those nude nuns writhing on the floor worked for free.

95% of people who go on the stage love to writhe on the floor and pretend to be mad.

I like happy nuns.

Oliver Reed in Curse of the Werewolf. HOT

Oliver Reed was never handsome but he had a very threatening, sexual presence. He was also very good and scary as Bill Sykes in his uncle Carol's Oliver.

Uncle Carol? Come again?

Sir Carol Reed (The Third Man, Odd Man Out, A Kid for Two Farthings, The Fallen Idol, etc.). Carol was the illegitimate son of Sir Herbert Beerbohm Tree.

I'm the only Tree as far as DL is concerned, r73.

Oliver Reed's long hair and soul patch do nothing for me. At the same time, his bald head and clean shaven face do nothing for me either. He was starting to get bloated and overweight in this movie. The Oliver Reed from Gladiator does not compare to the Oliver Reed from The Devils. It is sad what alcohol can do to a very talented and aristocratic individual.

Vanessa Redgrave as the hunchbacked nun still looks gorgeous. She was a divorced mother of two at this point in her career. Her father, the legendary Sir Michael Redgrave was a repressed homosexual known for his multiple affairs with men. I believe she was able to home in on her personal life and deliver one hell of a performance.

Murray Melvin is another cast member who I think did great. Why did his career not take off?

Carol used to be used as a name by either sex. Charles, Carol, Charlotte, Carolina, and other similar names all derive from the Roman male name Carolus.

R75 Murray has worked steadily for decades. Saw him in Torchwood and he was great. And his work with Littlewood ensues he will have a legacy.

Will Littlewood have a legacy?

She did that "Lovely War" show and rode the wave of enthusiasm for Bertolt Brecht which arrived in the mid-60s and disappeared in the late 70s.

I heard she was foul-mouthed, hard-faced, hard-socialist, resentful bitch who bad-mouthed 90% of the profession.

R78 Meh, I think for anyone with a knowledge of theatre Littlewood will be remembered.

Yes, and Ivor Novello and Beerbohm Tree will be remembered in theatre museums. But we won't be staging any of their shows.

[quote]Is this the one where she shoves a cross up her hairy front bum?

Not a cross, but rather (allegedly) Reed's charred femur. I say allegedly because I've heard it described in reviews, but it hasn't popped up in any version I've seen. There is a shot in the middle of the film of Redgrave masturbating in the asylum; maybe the reviewers are confusing the two moments.

[quote]Yes, and Ivor Novello and Beerbohm Tree will be remembered in theatre museums. But we won't be staging any of their shows.

Beerbohm Tree produced, directed and starred as Higgins in the first production of Pygmalion. That show at least I think will be around at least a bit longer. There are others.

How do I cross reference this to the other thread on "Bizarre Relationship Agesim" I want to see the neopuritan genZs lose their shit.

"In 1985, he [Reed]married Josephine Burge, to whom he remained married until his death. When they met in 1980, she was 16 years old and he was 42."

Ollie was quite the cutup

"Reed was banned from his local pub there for descending a chimney naked and shouting out: "Ho! Ho! Ho! I'm Santa Claus."

Ollie died before he finished Gladiator and they had to pull all kinds of special effect tricks to finish his scenes.

When Stanley Kubrick re-released Spartacus after Laurence Olivier's death, he had to get somebody to dub several of Olivier's scenes where the soundtrack was ruined. Anthony Hopkins did Olivier's voice.

Fat-faced Oliver did one movie with fat-faced Orson.

- Michael Gothard always reminded me of Rudolph Nureyev.

- One aspect of “The Devils” that I appreciated was the political angle. Cardinal Richelieu was trying to unite France under Louis XIII, and wanted to level the walls of independent cities, including Loudun. Grandier was an obstacle. At the end, with Grandier removed, the walls are destroyed.

- Though Russell was ever the impulsive, visceral director, he was able to make mostly memorable films. The even were not all that unsuccessful, because they never cost that much to make, due to the genius of Russell’s co-creator on many of them, his wife Shirley, who was always able to create sumptuous period costumes and find appropriate locations.

- My personal favorite Russell film is the wonderful, understated “Savage Messiah,” which is about the importance of artists to pursue their art. The images here support this idea, right up to the shocking finale.

- We need more directors like Ken Russell, who enjoy gripping audiences with visual images beyond car chases, gun battles, and explosions.

i saw SM when it was released in 1972 and recall liking it, but for the life of me cannot remember the "shocking" ending

[quote] cannot remember the "shocking" ending.

Me neither.

I do remember—

1. John Justin (who was once rather pretty) trying to be decadent and represent the Bloomsbury Set. 2. Dorothy Tutin who is a sweet-voiced Englishwoman unable to inhabit the role originally intended for Jeanne Moreau. 3. The fabulous use of 'Sirènes' from Claude Debussy's 'La Mer; Trois nocturnes' displaying the passion of the foolish young sculptor.

The nuns from this movie are in the new Space Jam

R20 But why should this freak-show bother you as Presbyterian.

The Uber-rational Huxley is saying these foolish huns behaved like rabid animals because the Catholic Church trained non-educated peasant women to be docile and celibate.

The Catholic Church is the villain in Huxley's story. Ken Russell chose Huxley's story because he likes freak-shows regardless of Huxley's message.

Oh, R92, you are repeating R24.

But I agree a real thespian with gravitas like Albert Finney would have give this shocking, cartoon-movie some credibility.

R93 Oh, bullshit. Reed has a wonderful sexuality. Finney was as sexy as dish water, and nobody, has ever, wanked over him. Let alone a nun.

[R88]: The “shocking” ending ending to “Savage Messiah” is the news relayed to urban sophisticates reviling gifted sculptor Henri Gaudier that he has been killed in the trenches of WWI. Followed by a burst of music and the weeping face of Dorothy Tutin, along with views of his modernist sculptures.