Butcher Block is a weekly series celebrating horror’s most extreme films and the minds behind them. Dedicated to graphic gore and splatter, each week will explore the dark, the disturbed, and the depraved in horror, and the blood and guts involved. For the films that use special effects of gore as an art form, and the fans that revel in the carnage, this series is for you.
Anytime a horror movie is touted to be “based on true events,” it’s usually met with some level of skepticism. Sometimes it’s an adaptation in the loosest sense, borrowing from actual people and events to launch an exaggerated fictional account, and sometimes the truth just really is stranger than fiction. Surely a film as notorious and sensationalized as the controversial Ken Russell 1971 film The Devils falls into the former category, right? Not so much. Sure, there’s a dreamlike (more like nightmarish) quality to The Devils, and Russell went for the religious jugular, but the events in the film are based on history and the film has its fingers on the pulse of truth. All of which lent to the creation of one of cinema’s most controversial banned films of all time.
Based on Aldous Huxley’s 1952 non-fiction novel The Devils of Loudun and its 1961 stageplay adaptation, The Devils is set in 17th century Loudun, France. According to history, Loudun was a town divided over those in favor of tearing down its surrounding walls and those who wanted the walls to remain. That division was exacerbated by a plague outbreak in 1632. Tensions and anxiety at an all-time high, hysteria spreads through the town when an entire convent of Ursuline nuns, led by prioress Jeanne des Anges, said they had been visited and possessed by demons. Their increasingly bizarre behavior of shouting, swearing, and barking in public drew enough attention that Cardinal Richelieu opted to intervene. The Cardinal, who wanted the walls down, found himself the perfect fall guy in Urbain Grandeur, a good-looking priest with an unsavory reputation and a public opposer of Richelieu. It kicked off the notorious witchcraft trial in 1634 that resulted in Grandeur’s being burned at the stake after being found guilty of being in league with the devil and seducing the entire convent of nuns.
So, plot-wise, Russell’s film adaption is pretty faithful. Oliver Reed stars as Grandeur, complete with the sex appeal that has all of Loudun’s ladies swooning, including the hunchbacked Sister Jeanne (Vanessa Redgrave). Jeanne is extremely lustful of Grandeur, which pushes over into wrathful jealousy when she learns of his relationship to the young and stunning Madeleine (Gemma Jones). Cue the demonic seduction accusations, and hysteria and chaos ensue.
In terms of violence, Russell doesn’t hold back on the torture inflicted upon Grandeur. Needles skewer his tongue, his bones are broken, and his excruciating death at the stake is unflinching. But then Russell doubles down with the brazen sexuality. Scenes that drew the most ire involved Sister Jeanne masturbating with Grandeur’s charred tibia, and the infamous “Rape of Christ” sequence that had the nuns devolve into a naked orgy that culminated in acting out their sexual desires with the statue of Christ. Shocking no one; The Devils ruffled a lot of feathers. The movie was deemed blasphemous and banned in many countries. It received an X-rating only after Russell cut out the most controversial scenes. The studio also trimmed scenes prior to submission to the British Board of Film Censors. Which explains why it’s a film considered tough to track down; there are various cuts in existence and some of the material removed now thought to be permanently lost.
The Devils was always intended to be incendiary. Russell had referred to this as his sole political film. The impact of the film tends to be the same no matter the version, because the corruptive collision of politics and religion and the wielding of hysteria as a weapon at the center proves horrific with or without the most infamous sequences. There’s a timelessness to that that shook critics and the Catholic Church upon release, and it’s still effective. It’s bolstered by a fully committed, immeasurably talented cast, Russell’s distinct style, and a stunning production design. Horror at its most depraved and sadistic tends to make casual viewers uncomfortable, and The Devils takes it to a whole new squeamish level with its nightmarish visuals steeped in historical accuracy.
