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Amazing on so many levels.
Incredible, beautiful, grotesque and subversive.

Quoted: This is Ken Russell's masterpiece of violence, political/religious opression and public hysteria.
Quoted from EOFF: In an astonishing year for British horror, the remarkable The Devils is the outstanding film, an excessive but brilliant study of madness and bigotry that remains possibly Russell's best work, and certainly his most controversial. Russell had, by the turn of the 70s, grown used to his work being vilified in public, but even he was perhaps unprepared for the outpouring of vitriol that greeted his liberal adaptation of Aldous Huxley's The Devils of Loudon [1952]. Dismissed by the critics, vilified by Christian pressure groups and met with bewilderment by a dazed public, The Devils provoked howls of outrage wherever it was shown.

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Ken Russell's The Devils.

Ken Russell UK 1971 111mins 35mm (18+)
"Based upon the Aldous Huxley novel set in 17th century France, Oliver Reed plays Urbain Grandier, a dissolute, proud but popular priest residing in the fortified city of Loudun. The flamboyant Louis XIII and Cardinal Richelieu conspire to have Grandier accused of witchcraft and of corrupting the local convent, headed by the physically and spiritually deformed Sister Jeanne, played by Vanessa Redgrave.
This magnificent fictional expose of the church is unlike any other film. It reveals public exorcisms, orgies and some spectacular scenes of sacrilegious debauchery. Building to a climactic frenzy of fire, screams and naked nuns and vividly choreographed against Derek Jarman's splendid sets, The Devils is an extravagant and sometimes disturbing production. The unholy vision and most vivid work of director Ken Russell.
Oliver Reed (more handsome and virile than ever) and Vanessa Redgrave (beautifully insane) are both excellent in the lead roles, while Derek Jarman's elegant sets transport us to a uniquely futuristic past.
Watching The Devils, one appreciates the stylistic beauty while remaining appalled by the relentless trajectory of its tale. In the end, there is no mistaking Russellís vision here, as unyielding and personal as ever. filmfanatic.org"