Over 50 years after its initial release, Warner Bros. is finally bringing The Devils to theaters nationwide for one week this October. This is a newly restored 4K version of the film’s director’s cut, which was screened for a limited time in the UK over two decades ago. And because it’s the original, uncut version, The Devils is rated NC-17 in the United States, marking the first time in over 20 years that WB has released a film with that extreme rating.
Released in 1971, The Devils is a fantastic film, considered by many critics to be filmmaker Ken Russell’s greatest movie. It tells a fictionalized and graphic account of the fall of 17th-century Roman Catholic priest Urbain Grandier over accusations of witchcraft. The movie also intertwines this tale with the story of Sister Jeanne des Anges, a sexually repressed nun who plays a key role in the fall of the priest.
And after decades of being incredibly hard to find, the director’s cut of The Devils will finally get its big theatrical release in the United States on October 16. It will run for one week only. Here’s the trailer. And a warning that contains a lot of flashing.
WB says this version of the film is the “uncut and unfiltered theatrical experience that Russell always envisioned,” and that this is the “first time the film will be presented restored and in 4K.” At the moment, there’s been no confirmation from WB about a physical disc release of The Devils, though it sounds like one is likely to arrive. The questions are which company will handle it and when it will happen.
It has been a while since WB put out an NC-17 movie in theaters. This MPAA rating is often reserved for extremely violent movies or films that contain a lot of explicit sex and nudity. It is similar to the ESRB’s rarely-given AO rating. And as far as I can tell, the last time WB was attached to an NC-17 movie that saw theatrical release was in 2004 with the release of John Waters’ A Dirty Shame, a box-office bomb that effectively ended his filmmaking career. I’ll be curious to see which theaters show this and which don’t, as historically, NC-17 ratings have scared off some theater chains and stores, something that hurt A Dirty Shame when it launched over 20 years ago.