‘The Devils’: Everything You Need to Know About the Unlikely Restoration of Ken Russell’s Scandalous, Sexually Charged Film

It was by far the hottest and hardest ticket at this year’s Cannes Film Festival.

Film fanatics did everything they could to elbow into the premiere of the highly anticipated, decades-in-the-making, director’s cut of Ken Russell’s “The Devils.” After all, the historical psychological horror-drama has become infamous, nearly a thing of myth among cinephiles, ever since its sexual and violent imagery of repressed nuns (who believe they’ve been possessed by satan) led to the film being censored in 1971.

Based on Aldous Huxley’s 1951 book “The Devils of Loudun,” and the hard-to-believe real-life story of a Roman Catholic priest, Urbain Grandier, being burned to death in 1634 after he was accused of seducing an entire convent of Ursuline nuns by making a pact with the devil, the film’s premise is certainly fantastical. But Russell, who converted to Catholicism as an adult, was not interested in the supernatural. He saw the story as a fever dream stirred up by the corruption and weaponization of religion, in what he described as “my most, indeed my only, political film.”

“He thought it was a film about brainwashing,” said English film critic Mark Kermode, who played a key role in the film’s restoration, when he introduced the film at Cannes. “He thought it was a film about the corruption of religion and the unholy marriage of church and state, which is an even more important subject now than it was when Ken very prophetically made it in 1971.”

From the start, scandal surrounded the film — United Artists dropped it after reading the provocative script, before Warner Brothers picked it up. Russell’s imagery and the way it builds toward a sexual, violent frenzy, are intended to provoke the audience and show how hysteria can be inflamed by those in power. Ultimately, “The Devils” was deemed too intense for modern audiences in 1971.

Looking back at the scandal surrounding “The Devils,” journalist Maron Durand wrote: “From over-the-top set designs by Derek Jarman, to orgy scenes, to blasphemy and torture, it had everything needed to cause outrage. And that it did: the film’s release caused a scandal. If the British Board of Film Censors (British Board of Film Classification) sought the least damage possible, some scenes — particularly the famous orgy scene with the nuns in the church — had to be cut, and the film was forced to be released with an X rating in England and in the U.S.”

Ken Russell’s ‘The Devils’ Clockwork

The most notable change was the removal of an extended sequence in the middle of the film, which featured a very public display of the alleged demonic possession, climaxing with hysterical nuns tearing down and ravaging a giant crucifix.

Explained Kermode, “Even the X-rated British cut [which had been less heavily edited than the U.S. R-rated version] had a huge hole in the middle of it because there was a key sequence that Ken said was some of his finest work that had not been able to be shown.” For director Paul Joyce’s 2002 documentary about the film, “Hell on Earth: The Desecration and Resurrection of ‘The Devils,’” Russell and Kermode decided to hunt for the scenes and footage that were removed from his original cut, and, according to Kermode, “after a very, very long search and a lot of flukes and strange coincidences, we found the sequences.”

That found footage was first featured in the documentary, and afterward, Russell and his longtime editor Michael Bradsell cut that central sequence back into “The Devils,” along with adding back some footage to the film’s ending, which, according to Kermode, “was very important for [Russell] in terms of the tragedy of the story.” In 2004, Bradsell and Russell’s newly restored Director’s Cut existed only on a digibeta tape, and Kermode arranged for that low-quality version to screen at the National Film Theater in London.

“It got a standing ovation,” recalled Kermode of the single 2004 screening of the digibeta. “And Ken said, ‘This is the version of the film that I want people to see.’”

When introducing the film at Cannes, Elize Tribble Russell, the director’s widow, reminded the audience that Russell was a dancer before becoming a filmmaker. She recalled, after the digibeta version screened in 2004, her late husband said, “‘Now I have my rhythm back.’” She went on to explain, “ For him, the film was as much about the music as the content, and not literally music, but the music that lived inside of him as a ballet dancer.”

Ken Russell on the set of ‘The Devils’

Following the scandal surrounding the film’s 1971 release, Warners kept the censored version of “The Devils” largely out of circulation. Still, the film gained a cult-like following, and its status was elevated through the years by a generation of filmmakers who revered it. Cannes head Thierry Frémaux told audiences that in the days following the announcement of the restoration’s Cannes premiere he had personally heard from Guillermo del Toro (who fought for years to get the film restored), Alfonso Cuarón, Cannes Jury President Park Chan-wook, and Peter Jackson (who was at the premiere) about wanting to see the film, “because for them, Ken Russell, and especially this movie, have a special importance in their life.”

For the better part of two decades, Warner Brothers stood in the way of Russell’s 2004 director’s cut from being restored and released, but that changed in 2025 when the studio announced the creation of Clockwork, its new independent film distribution and production arm. Clockwork president Christian Parkes and head of marketing Spencer Collantes made “The Devils” restoration a top priority, which, in addition to winning cinema lovers’ admiration for an important piece of film preservation, was also a brilliant stroke of marketing for the new company looking to make its mark with boundary pushing, bold director-driven films, not unlike its namesake, Stanley Kubrick’s “A Clockwork Orange”— yet another 1971 film from Warners that became embroiled in controversy for its portrayal of sex and violence.

On October 16 in the U.S. (October 30 in the U.K.), Clockwork will theatrically release the director’s cut of “The Devils” that premiered at Cannes. It will be the first time audiences can see Russell’s intended version, and it is a 4K restoration assembled from the film’s original camera negative that showcases Russell’s hallucinatory imagery like it has never been seen or heard before.

You can watch the trailer for the restoration here.