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Christianity and subversive content are regular bedfellows in film, but Ken Russell's The Devils might be the most depraved religious film ever, and there's only one known 35 mm print of the original X-rated version. Right now, it's at Portland's Hollywood Theatre.
Martin Scorsese's The Last Temptation of Christ humanized the Messiah as a man who considered opting out of the whole "horrible death" thing. William Friedkin's The Exorcist shows a little girl violently masturbating with a crucifix. And Abel Ferrara's Bad Lieutenant has a nun raped in a church, complete with penetration by crucifix.
Those films seem tame as an episode of Davey and Goliath next to The Devils, which is perhaps the most twisted film from Russell, whose most famous work is the Who's Tommy but whose Altered States is also a paragon of cinematic lunacy.
Devils starts with priests getting down at a gay theater and ends with a woman of God masturbating with a charred bone. The film follows the trial-by-hysteria of a philandering priest (Oliver Reed) in plague-ridden France, as he's accused of sexual witchcraft by a hunchbacked nun (Vanessa Redgrave). It was banned almost the minute it wrapped.
Bootleg DVDs and old-ass VHS tapes were your only chance to see this film in its intended, X-rated version before the Hollywood Theatre got it. But should you go?
The Devils is a surreal, brutal, twisted mindfuck of a movie designed to provoke. And provoke it does. In one scene, a woman simulates cunnilingus on Christ's spear wound; in another, an entire convent—habits aside—essentially rape a crucifix. This isn't a good film for family night. It's crass, trippy and intentionally offensive, with Reed's melodramatic sequences as a conflicted (but so sexy!) priest like melodramatic pap compared to Redgrave's sexual revolt.
The film is shocking for the sake of being shocking, but it's also essential, considering its place in cinematic history. Released in 1971—a banner year for X-rated prestige films thanks to this and A Clockwork Orange—Devils came at a time when audiences were still becoming accustomed to the thought of nudity and violence in the wake of the dissolution of the Hayes code. This is a director of distinct vision hurling blasphemy at the screen with reckless disregard for taste. What he does have is a keen eye for style, even when the film is almost unwatchably depraved.
Nearly 50 years after its release, Devils is still hidden from audiences at large. No film before it presented such a daftly executed takedown of religious hypocrisy. God willing, no film after it will either.
SEE IT: The Devils screens at the Hollywood Theatre. 7:30 pm Tuesday, June 21.
Also Showing:
The Mission Celebrates Pride with the classic Franco-Italian comedy La Cage Aux Folles and its American remake, The Birdcage. In the wake of unspeakable evil, Pride this year will need a bit of healing. Laughter might just offer the briefest of reprieves. Mission Theater. Opens Wednesday, June 15.
The Mission pays tribute to the late, great(est) Muhammad Ali with two essential film depicting the American icon: 1977's The Greatest, featuring the once Cassius Clay as a dramatized version of himself, and Michael Mann's criminally underrated Ali, featuring Will Smith in the finest performance of his career. Mission Theater. Opens Saturday, June 18.
It's man vs. some-sort-of-mummy-like-dude aboard a cruise ship in the 1974 Spanish stinker Voodoo Black Exorcist. Of note: The film contains zero exorcists. Joy Cinema. 9:15 pm Wednesday, June 15.
The finest film set in Oregon—with respect to the Dian Lane thriller internet thriller Untraceable—One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest gets the Movies at Dusk treatment. Pix Patisserie. Dusk. Wednesday, June 15.
It's the summer, the magical time when a young man's mind turns to simpler things like rock music and avoiding the increasingly rapey sexual advances of his teenage mother. Back to the Future speaks to us all like that. Academy Theater. Friday-Sunday, June 17-23.
Think your marriage is tough? Spend a night with Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor in Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf and you'll come out looking like the Cleavers. Laurelhurst Theater. Friday-Sunday, June 17-23.
With Kevin Smith still trying to make a television version (no!!!!!), it's important that we expose our children early to cult favorite The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension, a space opera in which a rock star/surgeon battles aliens in style. Which is to say, they don't just talk about their feelings and comic books. Luckily, Family Pictures has Peter Weller and crew locked and loaded. Hollywood Theatre. 2:30 & 9:30 pm Saturday-Sunday, June 18-19.
Before teenage vampires were sparkly whiners, they were The Lost Boys who were… well, also kind of sparkly whiners, though their sparkles were reflected off the studs in their leather jackets. And they actually fucked shit up. Cartopia. 9 pm Sunday, June 19.
Willamette Week