Despite—or perhaps because of—its tortured history, The Devils has only grown in stature over the decades. Critics have steadily reappraised the film, and it now holds a and a 7.7 user rating on IMDb. In 2015, Time Out named it one of the 50 most important films in history. Alex Cox, director of Repo Man , and Mark Kermede himself have both listed The Devils among the ten greatest achievements of cinema. The film won Russell the Best Director award at the Venice Film Festival and garnered accolades from the US National Board of Review—a remarkable achievement for a film that was simultaneously being banned in dozens of countries.
Ken Russell’s The Devils (1971) remains one of the most controversial and censored films in cinema history. Because Warner Bros. has famously "buried" the film, officially refusing to release the full uncut version on Blu-ray or high-definition streaming, the Internet Archive the devils 1971 internet archive
The film's production was marked by controversy, with reports of on-set chaos and a tumultuous relationship between the director and cast. Despite these challenges, "The Devil's 1971" managed to gain a loyal following, with fans drawn to its offbeat humor, memorable characters, and eerie atmosphere. Alex Cox, director of Repo Man , and
Ken Russell’s The Devils (1971) is widely regarded as one of the most controversial and heavily censored films in cinema history The Other Folk Because Warner Bros
The film’s troubles began before it even reached cinemas. When Ken Russell submitted a rough cut to the British Board of Film Censors (BBFC) and Warner Bros. executives in early 1971, both institutions were horrified. In a rare instance of , the BBFC and the studio each compiled separate lists of required cuts, targeting the film’s most incendiary mixture of graphic sexuality, sadistic violence, and religious imagery. The most notorious of these sequences—the so‑called “Rape of Christ” —featured a convent of frenzied nuns tearing a life‑sized crucifix from a church wall and ravaging the effigy of Jesus in an orgiastic frenzy. Russell had also filmed a brief scene of Sister Jeanne sexually abusing a charred thigh bone. Both sequences were removed before the film was formally submitted for classification.