Ken Russell's The Devils (1971)

[jimqk]

Sometime during the 80s or early 90s, I caught the end of this movie on USA Network. At the time, I had no idea there was so much controversy surrounding it. After reading about this movie over the past few years, I'm surprised USA televised it at all. I'm certain it must have been a heavily edited version.

Anyway, I'd really like to see this movie. At some point you'd think Warner would allow somebody to release this film. The only thing preventing this release must be pressure from the church. If Warner is so embarrassed by this picture, why not absolve itself completely from it? Warner obviously doesn't want to license it out to anybody. (It's hard to believe they allowed the BFI to release this on DVD.) Why not sell the copyright then?

Nothing Warner had done over the years regarding this picture makes sense. Why only provide DVD-only worthy elements to BFI? Why put it on iTunes and pull it a few days later? Why allow bootleggers to make money on it? Why allow Amazon UK to offer a streaming version of it, but not Amazon's U.S. streaming service?

There is certainly a market for this in the U.S. and abroad. Why not capitalize on that? There are many film nuts who would buy a restored version of this movie on Blu-ray. A Criterion Blu-ray version would be awesome. A Warner version would be awesome, too, but apparently Warner is embarrassed still by this. Is Warner being paid to suppress it? Maybe? None of it makes sense to me.