Friday, November 02, 2012

Please Yell At Me

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The Film Society of Lincoln Center is showing Ken Russell's The Devils tonight. If you know one thing about The Devils, it's probably the fact that due to continued censorship it's still a nearly impossible film to see - it's been butchered into a slew of different versions over the years, and its studio - Warner Brothers - still refuses to release it on DVD in any proper form. Thankfully I've seen the film on the big screen before; FSLC had a Ken Russell retrospective back in August of 2010 and showed it. Russell was even there for a Q&A afterwards, thankfully giving me the opportunity to be in the presence of his mad genius once before he died a year ago this month. (He did it for me, you know.) 

Anyway there shouldn't be any problem, I should be all over this... but it's a Midnight movie, and I am lame. Hence this post's title. Yell at me! I have got to go. I should be drinking a Red Bull right this minute. I just read and posted about the book that covers the behind-the-scenes of the film's sordid history last month, called Raising Hell: Ken Russell and the Unmaking of The Devils, and I'm about to read Aldous Huxley's The Devils of Loudon, on which the film is based, so it seems like especially timely, uh, timing. It's all fresh in my head. I must go! I must! you have convinced me.
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2 comments:

gregory brown said...

I have some vague memory of seeing some version of THE DEVILS on VHS some time in the 70's. It was impressively grotesque. I hope it gets some general release before I die in the next 20 years or so.

If Mel Gibson's S/M snuff film can become a hit, why is this kept from us?

Enjoy the Huxley. I read it in high school, which gives some idea of what I was like then. Huxley and Mencken. Damn!

-carywd said...

- worth seeing it just for those amazing vertigo-inducing sets by derek jarman