More than half a century after censors, studios and moral crusaders tried to bury it, Ken Russell’s The Devils is coming back to the big screen — and this time nobody is holding the scissors. Warner Bros. Clockwork is putting the 1971 psychological horror drama back into North American theaters in a fresh 4K restoration, cut to Russell’s own specifications and stamped with an unapologetic NC-17 rating.
If you only know the film by reputation, that reputation is deserved. Loosely based on the Loudun possession scandal of 17th-century France, The Devils pairs Oliver Reed and Vanessa Redgrave in a fevered study of faith, politics and hysteria. It was hacked apart on release, refused certification in several territories, and spent decades circulating in compromised versions. Seeing it restored and intact is, for a lot of cinephiles, a genuine event.
Here is what’s confirmed:
- North American release: October 16, 2026, an exclusive one-week engagement in select theaters
- UK and Ireland release: October 30, 2026
- Format: new 4K restoration, cut to Ken Russell’s specific direction
- Rating: NC-17, for sexual content and graphic nudity
- Distributor: Warner Bros. Clockwork
The 4K element is the part that matters most for anyone who has only endured murky broadcast prints or grey-market copies. Russell’s production, with Derek Jarman’s stark, tile-white set design and Peter Maxwell Davies’ abrasive score, was always a film of extreme contrasts — blinding whites against pooling shadow, flesh against stone. A proper high-resolution restoration is exactly the kind of treatment that design language demands, and it should finally let audiences appreciate the deranged grandeur of the thing rather than squint at it.
The NC-17 badge is worth dwelling on, because it’s not a marketing stunt so much as an act of principle. For a film that was famously butchered to satisfy nervous distributors, releasing it uncensored is the whole point. Warner Bros. isn’t sanding down the corners to widen the audience; it’s restoring the corners that were sawn off in the first place. That’s a rare move for a major studio, and a welcome one.
The catch, as ever with revival releases, is scarcity. The North American run is a one-week, select-theaters engagement, so this is not a film you can casually schedule around. Blink and it’s gone. UK and Ireland viewers get their turn a couple of weeks later, on October 30.
Whether The Devils holds up as horror, as history or as pure provocation is something you’ll have to decide in the dark, at full resolution, the way Russell intended. For a movie the establishment spent decades trying to make disappear, that’s a satisfying kind of vindication.
