The Devils - Will's Review

This week's movie would have been well suited to our season of controversial films, Beyond Nasty, being riddled with a near constant barrage of sex, violence, and blasphemy. It's no surprise that this movie had problems with the censors in almost every country it was released in. In fact, it was so badly shredded by various censorship boards, that parts of it are lost forever, still more parts still missing from most home releases; even the version we watched featured a shortened orgy, and is missing a masturbation scene.

I'll not bore you trying to explain the plot of this one; it's fairly convoluted, and if you really want to know, Wikipedia has a full run through. The quick version is that Oliver Reed plays a priest placed in charge of an entire walled city in pre revolutionary France, while the crown are keen to discredit him in order to be able to destroy said city. Meanwhile the priest is somewhat catnip to the ladies; he's got one woman pregnant, married another in secrete, and become the subject of the sexual obsession of a nun.

It's a clever film, and it has lots of interesting imagery, although at times I wasn't quite sure what it was driving for (at one point the possessions and exorcism both are conclusively and very publicly shown to be lies... Then carry on regardless) and personally I'm not a fan of Oliver Reed's acting style (which is far from naturalistic). At times I struggled to decided if the sets, particularly the White bricks of the convent with their harsh black, seemingly painted on, outlines, were stylised, or simply bad.

All in all well made, but not for me.