{"id":817931,"date":"2026-10-29T20:38:15","date_gmt":"2026-10-29T20:38:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/817931\/"},"modified":"2026-10-29T20:38:15","modified_gmt":"2026-10-29T20:38:15","slug":"how-the-devils-became-the-must-see-movie-this-halloween","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/817931\/","title":{"rendered":"How The Devils Became The Must-See Movie This Halloween"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u201cNo, I didn\u2019t think I\u2019d ever see Sister Jeanne on a t-shirt<\/a>,\u201d Mark Kermode admits. Vanessa Redgrave\u2019s sacrilegiously horny nun in Ken Russell\u2019s 1971 film The Devils \u2013 whose cloistered lust brings hell to a 17th Century French town \u2013 is not obvious t-shirt material. In part because The Devils has never been widely available, banned in several UK cities, hacked at by censors and studios. Until now. In 2026, The Devils is finally among us<\/a> once more, in its full uncut glory \u2013 and with t-shirts to boot. \u201cI’ve seen one which just says, \u2018Fuck it, let’s release The Devils\u2019,\u201d Kermode chuckles. Fuck it, indeed.<\/p>\n

\"The<\/p>\n

Against all odds, the must-see movie this Halloween season isn\u2019t a new Conjuring<\/a>, nor a new A24 film from a Curry Barker<\/a> wunderkind. It\u2019s The Devils \u2013 made over half a century ago by a Brit director better known for The Who rock opera Tommy, and the Oscar-winning Women In Love. Now fully restored \u2013 not just uncut, but remastered frame-by-frame \u2013 The Devils returns as event cinema, following a rapturous festival run.<\/p>\n

It even boasts a bass-rumbling, eye-sizzling new trailer, pulsing with images of debauchery and blasphemy, more akin to the marketing for Robert Eggers\u2019 Nosferatu<\/a> than a typical re-release. There is nothing retro about The Devils\u2019 resurrection. \u201cMy instinct was, Ken would have loved [the trailer],\u201d reckons Kermode, who has long campaigned for the film\u2019s restoration. \u201cThey don’t want you to look at this as a 55-year-old film, a relic that we’ve dusted off. They want you to look at it as a contemporary film.\u201d<\/p>\n

Months before its Halloween-ready wide release (via Warner Bros\u2019 new indie-leaning \u2018Clockwork\u2019 label in the US, and the BFI in the UK), The Devils was the film on everyone\u2019s lips upon its Cannes premiere this summer. \u201cAll the headlines were, it was both the hottest ticket in town, and the coolest screening in town,\u201d says Kermode, who was in the middle of the fray. \u201cWe were outside before the screening, and people [were] touting: \u2018Have you got a ticket? Have you got a spare ticket?\u2019 There was this palpable feeling that something really exciting was happening.\u201d<\/p>\n

Russell\u2019s film looks modern. Feels modern. And modern audiences are responding in a modern way.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s been a long time coming. Russell adapted his film from John Whiting\u2019s play, and Aldous Huxley\u2019s account of the real historic events, titled The Devils Of Loudun. In 1971, the film was heavily censored \u2013 the biggest loss being a pivotal central sequence in which a group of corrupted nuns enact a scene of mass ecstasy, writhing around a crucifix in an eye-popping display of sexual reverie. The footage was long lost, and Kermode \u2013 a longtime Russell devotee \u2013 often enquired of its whereabouts. In the early 2000s, Warner archivist Tim Everett rediscovered the reels in a mislabelled tin, reinstated by the film\u2019s original editor, Mike Bradsall, for a 2004 screening. But a wider release never came \u2013 until Clockwork called over 20 years later.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere were times when I was absolutely certain that it\u00a0wasn\u2019t\u00a0going to happen,\u201d Kermode admits. \u201cWhen we were in Cannes, I was sitting with [Russell\u2019s wife] Lisi and we kept turning to each other going, \u2018Is this actually happening?\u2019\u201d Now it\u2019s happening on a worldwide stage. The Devils isn\u2019t just being pitched to horror-heads as a new movie-going experience \u2013 it\u2019s being received as one too, given its formerly unattainable status. The film doesn\u2019t play like something made over half a century ago, either \u2013 strikingly contemporary in its crisp, stylistic visuals, from the minimalist white walls of Loudun, to the maximalist pageantry of King Louis XIII\u2019s court. Russell\u2019s approach was to \u201cnot look like a historical work,\u201d notes Kermode. \u201cIf you\u2019re living in Loudun in the 17th century, it doesn’t look old and mossy. The people who lived in Loudun were modern people, and they thought their city was a modern city.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"The<\/p>\n

It is uncannily prescient thematically, too. In our supposed \u2018post-truth\u2019 era, The Devils plays as a parable of the death of objective reality, where moral bastardisation is justified by religious fervour. Like The Odyssey \u2013 or even Digger \u2013 it depicts a world in which society\u2019s codes have been irrevocably broken, with cataclysmic consequences. Such contemporary parallels have shape-shifted over The Devils\u2019 lifetime, very much by Russell\u2019s design. \u201cThe events are in the past, but they are referring to the present and to the future,\u201d surmises Kermode. \u201cIn 10 years\u2019 time, it’ll be a parable of another modern age, and people will read different things into it.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"The<\/p>\n

Shocking, too, is just how\u2026 well, shocking The Devils remains. As Halloween viewing, the film might not be the outright fright-fest people have imagined over the decades (\u201cThere aren’t any devils in it that aren’t human,\u201d Kermode puts it). But it is a cinematic assault on the senses \u2013 a film about extremity, told in an extreme mode. Russell dubbed it the \u201ccinema of experience\u201d; here, that experience includes wince-worthy physical cruelty, profane sexual exploits, immolation, and stomach-churning power-hungry villainy. \u201cIt hurts,\u201d says Kermode. \u201cWhy does it hurt? Because you believe that that guy is\u00a0actually\u00a0being tortured. If you’re emotionally engaged, things hurt a lot more. And I mean hurt in a good way. They bite.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"The<\/p>\n

The sensibilities of the film are strikingly similar to where the horror genre has returned in recent years: auteur-driven (see the official title: Ken Russell\u2019s The Devils), formally experimental, blending arthouse sensibilities with did-they-just\u2026? shocks. It\u2019s all come full-circle; over 50 years later, The Devils re-enters a lineage of films inspired by the likes of The Devils.<\/p>\n

Russell\u2019s film looks modern. Feels modern. And modern audiences are responding in a modern way. It\u2019s recently entered the Letterboxd Top 250 after a flurry of fresh views and rave reviews. There are those streetwear-inspired Sister Jeanne shirts for purchase. Social media is awash with people thirsting over Oliver Reed\u2019s rugged priest, Father Grandier \u2013 whose sheer sexual magnetism is central to the plot. (\u201cTell me, as an old man, what is a thirst trap?\u201d Kermode enquires when presented with this notion.)<\/p>\n

\"The<\/p>\n

Such visceral audience responses \u2013 particularly to the film\u2019s sensuality, its extremity \u2013 are proof that The Devils is truly alive again. \u201cThe camera is looking at Grandier as everyone in that film looks at him,\u201d says Kermode. \u201cIt’s Ken, looking at Oliver Reed through the lens, and Oliver Reed transforming into Grandier, making you see what Sister Jeanne and everyone else was seeing. Which was: there’s a man worth going to hell for.\u201d Amen. Fuck it, let\u2019s go and see The Devils.<\/p>\n

Ken Russell\u2019s The Devils is out now in US cinemas, and in UK cinemas from October 30<\/p>\n