Possessed nuns and sexual deviance: the history behind Ken Russell’s highly-censored film The Devils

IMDB The long-awaited director’s cut of the late Ken Russell’s 1971 film The Devils will be released this month, featuring previously unseen censored material such as the notorious “ rape of Christ ” sequence.

The film is a dramatisation of the supposed demonic possessions of a convent of nuns that unfolded in 17th century Loudon, in western France.

It focuses on the religious fanaticism that consumed the town, and the tragic figure at the centre of it – Urbain Grandier – the Catholic priest who was ultimately charged with witchcraft and burned at the stake.

At the heart of The Devils is a powerful critique of institutional religion and its union with the state, scapegoating and violent oppression.

An attack on the Catholic Church Upon its release, The Devils was banned in several countries and heavily censored in others.

The film is full of wild imagery of spiritual ecstasies, torture, violence and sexual impurities.

The most egregious examples of this imagery had to be cut before the United Kingdom and United States film boards would even classify the film.

Cuts ranged from minor close-ups of graphic torture and nudity, to a brief scene of a nun pleasuring herself with a charred human femur bone.

The most lengthy cut was the “rape of Christ”, where the possessed nuns defile a life-sized effigy of Christ during a frenzied orgy.

This sequence offers more than shock-value: it encapsulates the film’s central themes.

Much of the cut footage was thought to be lost until 2002, when film critic Mark Kermode uncovered it in the Warner Brothers archives .

Russell subsequently compiled a director’s cut in 2004, screening it for a small number of audiences.

Even so, Warner Brothers waited another 22 years before releasing this restored version.

A surreal and extravagant filmmaker British-born Russell (1927–2011) was a trailblazing director, with works ranging from the Academy Award-winning drama Women in Love (1969), to the fantastical rock opera Tommy (1975) starring The Who.