This past weekend, Warner Bros. Clockwork opened Ken Russell’s The Devils in 350 locations across North America to $1.725 million, a $4,925 per-screen average. Due to popular demand from movie lovers everywhere, the theatrical run is no longer a one-week exclusive. The Warner Bros. label’s inaugural release will continue to play across multiplex and arthouse venues.
And you should absolutely make time for it. I hadn’t seen The Devils in 20 years, and I always remembered it as sort of a horror masterpiece. Watching it with more adult eyes, though, I found this movie absolutely hilarious. It’s a really fun, funny, mean commentary on religion and hysteria, especially religious hysteria in that time period. But it’s equally brutal, transgressive, and heartbreaking. Just a true masterpiece. Everything you’ve heard is true, and you should drop everything to see it in a theater on a big screen.
Our own Matt Konopka was similarly blown away, giving it a perfect 5 out of 5 in his Beyond Fest review and calling it “the definitive version of Russell’s stunning masterpiece.”
The NC-17 film is an event 55 years in the making. It is the first time that the definitive, uncensored director’s cut is available to audiences everywhere. Following its Cannes premiere, where it was praised as “the coolest film” by Deadline, Warner Bros. Clockwork rolled the film out at key film festivals where all screenings sold out: Il Cinema Ritrovato, Toronto International Film Festival, New York Film Festival, Beyond Fest, BFI London Film Festival, Sitges Film Festival, and Festival Lumière.
The official trailer has amassed more than 21 million organic views since its August launch, driven by an online Gen Z cinephile audience. Tickets sold out instantly for 35mm previews at 10 locations, more than six weeks before the film’s release.
An enduring masterpiece of cinema starring Academy Award winner Vanessa Redgrave and Oliver Reed, Ken Russell’s The Devils is a prescient epic of obsession and corruption, and a defining work of art from seminal filmmaker Ken Russell. Produced by Warner Bros. in 1971, the film received Best Director awards from two of the most prestigious institutions in the world: the 33rd Venice International Film Festival and the U.S. National Board of Review. Its critical reception in the following decades has only become more impassioned, championed by artists and film historians including Guillermo del Toro and Mark Kermode.
In addition to powerhouse performances from Reed and Redgrave, Ken Russell’s The Devils showcases the stunning work of artists at the peak of their craft: Academy Award winning cinematographer David Watkin (Out of Africa, Chariots of Fire); editor Michael Bradsell (Local Hero, Jabberwocky); and visual artist Derek Jarman, whose work as production designer marks his feature film debut.
Ken Russell’s The Devils is the definitive cut of The Devils, and no other director’s cut formally exists. This cut was originally reconstructed in 2004 under the supervision of Ken Russell and the film’s editor Michael Bradsell, with the collaboration of Mark Kermode and Paul Joyce. The 4K restoration was completed using the original camera negative at WB Water Tower Color, with audio restoration completed using original composite 35mm mag film at WB Sound. Warner Bros. Clockwork’s release marks the first time this definitive cut will officially be made accessible to the public.
An international theatrical release will follow. BFI will release the film in UK/Ireland beginning October 30. Theatrical runs will also extend to Poland (October 23), France (October 28), Australia/New Zealand (October 29), Germany/Austria (October 29), Greece (November 12), the Netherlands (November 12), and other territories to be announced.
Ken Russell was a pioneering Academy Award nominated British filmmaker, the disruptive visionary behind classics like Tommy, Women in Love, and Altered States. He directed one Academy Award winning performance: Glenda Jackson in Women in Love. His career spanned more than six decades, with more than 75 credits across theatrical features, TV movies, and short films.
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