The Devils (1971)
Directed by Ken Russell
In 1634 France, charismatic Father Urbain Grandier becomes the target of a sexually obsessed nun’s witchcraft accusations, which corrupt church and state officials are all too happy to exploit.
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What critics compared The Devils to
Virginie Efira (who had a supporting role in Elle) perfectly channels the alluring manipulations of Benedetta, and her performance belongs in the same conversations praising Vanessa Redgrave in The Devils (1971) or Lucyna Winnicka in Mother Joan of Angels (1961).
But “Benedetta” doesn’t match the transgressive, blasphemous heights of, say, Ken Russell‘s “The Devils” (in which it wasn’t merely a wooden doll being used as a dildo but a charred human femur), because it ends all its scenes with a wink and a nudge.
What Verhoeven takes from the story is the absolute corruption of the Church and the (im)possibilities of making a modern nunsploitation flick worthy of splitting a bill with Ken Russell's The Devils .
What Movies Will It Remind You Of?: Evans has mentioned that films that inspired him include the 1968 Vincent Price movie Witchfinder General , the notorious 1971 Ken Russell film The Devils , and of course the 1973 cult classic (pun kind of intended) The Wicker Man (the original, though we imagine Evans finds some value in the insane Nicolas Cage remake as well).
Its complexities become more fussy than fun, as the men of Erisden each fight for control (and compete for the “act most like Oliver Reed in The Devils Award”).
But Evans adds in British folk-horror like 1968’s Witchfinder General and Ken Russell’s controversial 1971 film The Devils, as well as contemporary takes on the genre, like Ben Wheatley’s Kill List.
Writer/director Maggie Betts' feature directorial debut is meant to illustrate how Vatican II reforms completely changed nunhood in the Catholic Church by following one young woman's journey at the height of the controversy (one third left their vocations over a decade), but her tone flirts with the hysteria of Ken Russell's "The Devils," giving her film a camp quality she surely never intended.
No one is going to mistake Novitiate for Ken Russell’s The Devils, or one of the many lesser “nunsploitation” films that came out in the ’70s, but it crosses the line between austerity and titillation a few times.
Some may find the heaving and excess too reminiscent of Ken Russell’s crazy 1971 campfest The Devils (like that’s a bad thing!), but others will be impressed with the restraint and respectfulness of the more erotic scenes.
Fans of Monty Python, first-wave L.A. punk band Catholic Discipline, and Ken Russell’s The Devils may want to steer clear of this intimate and graceful portrait of the harshly regimented life in a convent circa 1964-65.
Demonic fits reminiscent of the infamous “rape of Christ” sequence from Ken Russell’s The Devils are viewed from overhead – Busby Berkeley goes to hell.
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The convent scenes indulge freely in half-joking film references, possibly including Ken Russel’s 1971 The Devils and the 1985 drama Agnes of God ; and what seem to be very deliberate imitations of Wes Anderson’s distinctive camera work, the whimsical group shots in startling contrast to the grim situation.
Everyone from Pennywise to the nuns from Ken Russell’s “The Devils” show up.
For whatever it’s worth, New Legacy will be the only 2021 movie to feature The Mask, Austin Powers, Jabberjaw, a nun from Ken Russell’s The Devils, Superman, and Foghorn Leghorn.
As onlookers emerge from the hills, the stands begin to overflow with a generation’s worth of Warner Brothers’ characters — including Jane Hudson from What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?, Alex’s droogs from A Clockwork Orange, and, for some reason, the nuns from Ken Russell’s The Devils.
And yet, for a film that is clearly inspired by “The Shining,” “Rear Window,” and “The Devils,” Verbinski may display the fastidious filmmaking of Stanley Kubrick and Alfred Hitchcock, but his film never comes close to having any of the lurid fun of Ken Russell.
Clear links to such key texts as Ken Russell’s fiercely political The Devils (and perhaps, by extension, Hans Christian-Schmid’s Requiem or Dietrich Brüggemann’s Stations of the Cross ) point us toward psychosomatic interpretations.
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His three mother superiors represent three different stripes - genuine love, sadistic tyranny and sexual madness (one imagines Huppert would have leapt at a chance to have been in Ken Russell's "The Devils").
Notwithstanding the deliriously swoony depictions of the rocky temple from which bats flutter and rise in helix-like synchronicity and rivers of blood flow in perfectly choreographed response to the abstract birth of the vampire, Jordan's depiction of how Clara was made a whore before she was reborn a bloodsucker isn't quite so audacious, less Ken Russell's The Devils than drab Masterpiece Theater.