Click here to copy URL

The Devils

The Devils (Ken Russell's Film of The Devils)

1971

Ken Russell

Vanessa Redgrave, Oliver Reed, Dudley Sutton, Max Adrian ...

6.8

1,665

Horror. Drama This is the disturbing story of a highly influential priest in the French city of Loudon. Cardinal Richelieu and his power-hungry entourage seek to take control of seventeenth-century France, but need to destroy Father Grandier - the priest who runs the fortified town that prevents them from exerting total control. So they seek to destroy him by setting him up as a warlock in control of a devil-possessed nunnery, the mother superior of ... [+]

	Author	Review
United States	Dave Kehr Chicago Reader	"The funniest thing about this 1971 Ken Russell camp epic is probably the juxtaposition of its first-class production values (...) with Russell's no-class sexual fantasies—it's like a David Lean remake of 'Pink Flamingos'."	POS
United States	Vincent Canby The New York Times	"It's a see-through movie composed of a lot of clanking, silly, melodramatic effects that, like rib-tickling, exhaust you without providing particular pleasure, to say nothing of enlightenment."	NEG
United States	Katie Rife AV Club	"The truly provocative (...) part of the film is its assertion that, even while preaching their rhetoric of sin and salvation, nuns and priests and cardinals are only human, and humans are nothing but animals."	POS
United States	Meagan Navarro Bloody Disgusting	"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."	POS
United States	Roger Ebert rogerebert.com	"All the events and persons depicted in 'The Devils' are intended to be confused with actual events and persons. How do I know? Ken Russell tells me so."	NEG
United States	Jay Cocks Time	"Russell's flamboyant theatricality and his interest in the perverse have been too much imposed on his other films; but here, style and subject are perfectly matched."	POS

Return to movie

We encourage you to check the reviews' original sources. Intellectual property rights of these reviews belong to their authors and/or the correspondent media from which they have been extracted. If you'd like to help us to add more reviews to your favorite movies, just send us a message.