Our prayers have been answered with Warner Bros. Clockwork's brand new 4K Director's Cut restoration of Ken Russell's The Devils. Cross yourself and feast your eyes on today's brand new trailer below:
Starring Vanessa Redgrave and Oliver Reed, Ken Russell's The Devils loosely adapts Aldous Huxley’s novel The Devils of Loudun and the story of Urbain Grandier, a 17th-century Roman Catholic priest accused of witchcraft and bewitching a convent of nuns, causing them to commit all kinds of blasphemous acts in the name of sexual hysteria.
Notoriously controversial upon debut in 1971 due to its graphic violence and sexual content, Ken Russell's The Devils was cut significantly by the BBFC and Warner Bros., meaning that Russell’s true vision, which includes the sequence affectionately referred to as the ‘Rape of Christ’, has had a troubled release history to say the least.
Clockwork’s new 4K restoration is cut to Russell’s specific direction, assembled from the original camera negative by London’s Lucida Productions, finally uncut and unfiltered in all its blasphemous glory. If you weren't already convinced, here's what the great Guillermo del Toro has to say of it:
“The restoration of the material is like cleaning the Sistine Chapel with saliva. It is insane, the epic size of the film. I mean, I’ve seen it on the big screen in Telluride at a theater – but I’ve never seen the movie until I saw this restoration.”
Ken Russell's The Devilsopens in select North American theaters on October 16 for an exclusive one-week engagement, with international theatrical dates to be announced.
