The Cat Deficit

tv--Where are all the cats on television? OK, there's a program on tonight on Animal Planet, but overall, cats are underrepresented in television land, never mind the halls of Congress. Why is this? Look, cats will always be better to watch than all other pets combined and they're funny too. Cute? Fuhgeddaboutit. There is Ken Russell's "A Kitten for Hitler," but that doesn't count. This whole state of affairs is puzzling.

So where are the cats? Huh? Where?

Every time I go to the Field Museum in Chicago (which isn't often), I go to the Egyptian section...to see the mummified cats. OK, I look at the artifacts from Pompeii too, I'm a sucker for the morbid, and 3,000 year old dice are cool too. The cats are the best. The Egyptians loved their cats so much that if someone killed a cat they were immediately killed for it. They loved their cats so much that they mummified them so that they could be with them forever in the Egyptian (as opposed to the others) afterlife. That's love, it couldn't be anything else. The Romans and Persians also loved cats, so there must have been something redeeming about them.

I can relate to all cat lovers: I love my cat, Saffron, a precocious little American short-hair tabby, a cute little gray (no, not an alien, I'm beating you to it). Our feline friends tend to have a more nurturing quality to them, and I argue that they bring out the best in humanity, they humanize us and we can learn from them. Cats don't lie, either, there are no cat politicians. They might try to get one past you--getting into food because they're hungry--but lie? Never. Only people can do that, thanks to language.

We want our cats and we want them now. Where are the goddamned cats? In troubled times, cats can be the difference between chronic depression and poetic happiness. Religion? Who needs that when you have a cat, or several cats (just don't get too many, that sometimes becomes a problem with some of the ladies out there). Cats, h-mmmm? I've seen a few on Anthony Bourdain's show on the Travel channel, and they weren't even sitting on a plate. There just aren't enough cats, and that-is-that...wrote Matt (fancy that).

No, there's no deficit of cats on television, what we have is a general cat-as-trophe. Show me the dead bodies and the flooded plains, the general strikes, the murders, epidemics, economic collapse, war, terrorism, the riots--but throw the image of a cat in there every once and awhile and it helps alleviate the tension. A college roommate of mine once wrote an absurdist play about a man whose shoulder sprouted a cat's head, a comedy of manners. How horrible is that?

Why a cat? Because cats are funny, they're good friends, and they're unpretentious and unfazed by much. Cats would be good at poker if they were able. Cats are innately positive creatures, even when they're bad.

Nobody says (until now), "There's a cat in the room that nobody wants to acknowledge," because everyone wants to say, "Ohhhh, kittttyyyy!" My whole point: cats mean good health and happiness (just clean the box). Forget the wives, forget the American Dream, forget religion, and all the rest. Cats are nature's perfection, they're smart, they're where it's at. I'm almost certain that cats tricked us all into creating civilization so that they'd have houses to live in. Now, that's smart. Dogs aren't as smart--they lack the tact--and they don't hold a candle to a cat. Send in the cats!

Ken Russell at the BBC Box Slated for Sept. 23rd

Film--This is great news for true lovers of cinema everywhere. These were documentaries done by Ken Russell during the 1960s for BBC television. Most are around an hour, some longer, and either focus on some great artist or composer. More than a few of these films were made for significantly less than a million English pounds.

The set is composed of 3 DVDs (NTSC), clocking-in at 477 minutes. As far as I can tell, they're all black & white, and full screen format as they were broadcast. I own the Isadora Duncan film in 16mm print form, and it looks absolutely luminous.

Expect very surprising quality: the television prints are very fine- grain, and on AGFA safety film ("no vinegar)"! "Dance of the Seven Veils" was Russell's final BBC film--he was booted-out after that, not to return until 1992's "Lady Chatterly," and only because it was through BBC-Birmingham. Sometimes, you have to bypass the head office, and the memory at the BBC is a very long one indeed.

The big surprise of the set is that it has a "suppressed" film. Just a few-years-back, "Dance of the Seven Veils" was banned by the Strauss estate from being shown at a Belgian film festival. The reasons were obvious from the film's content: Russell paints the waltz composer Richard Strauss for what he was--an ardent Nazi supporter (though this is arguable), and one of Hitler's most famous admirers outside of Leni Riefenstahl. Russell argues throughout the majority of his biopic documentaries (even his studio ones) that, yes, these were incredibly flawed individuals, but that their artistic works redeem them. This release is sorely overdue.

The tentative film list:

The Debussy Film, Dante's Inferno (w. Oliver Reed!!), Always on Sunday, Isadora: The Biggest Dancer in the World, A Song of Summer, Dance of the Seven Veils

Ken Russell Extravaganza!

"I have two more breakthrough films on the stocks – Porn-Again Christian and A Chink in the Curtains. Each one lasts just one minute, including credits." --Ken Russell, December 14th, 2007.

Russellmania--That wonderful enfant terrible of cinema has been writing an often hilarious and always thoughtful column for The Times. Ken Russell also has a new film entitled 'A Kitten for Hitler,' and it's free, online for all you deadbeats: http://www.comedybox.tv/index.aspx . Ken gives a bit of a synopsis at Comedy Box when he states that:

This story concerns Lenny, a naive little Jewish boy from Brooklyn, who reasons that Hitler wouldn’t be so bad if he were treated like a human being instead of a monster. Accordingly, he risks life and limb to cross war-torn Europe to deliver to "Uncle Adolf" a placatory Christmas present in the shape of a cuddly kitten [Ed.-I think we should try this with the president, don't you?]. Moved to tears, the Führer hands him a swastika-shaped bagel from the Christmas tree, whereupon Lenny pulls up his shirt, revealing an almost identical birthmark. What happens next I leave to your imagination– likewise the moving payoff.

Here's to extremely bad taste done on-the-cheap!And this is just one of a few other films of Ken's that are available, free, and online to all you cheap bastards out there.

Ken's newest article at The Times (UK): http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/film/article3074343.ece

FOR NATO: Pier Paolo Pasolini's Salò (1975) review

Social order at the expense of liberty is hardly a bargain. ---The Marquis de Sade

So you say you've seen nearly every major Italian giallo? You've seen your Argento, Mario Bava, Lucio Fulci, Michele Soavi, and even all of the "classics" of Italian film? You've seen your Leone, Fellini, DeSicca, Bertolucci, Martino, and even most of the world classics? By this point, you've probably seen it all, and you think there's no film that will shock you?

If you haven't seen Pier Paolo Pasolini's "Salo: 120 Days of Sodom," you are flatly wrong. Pasolini didn't even live to see the release of this film. He was "murdered" by a male hustler (or so the official story plays).

Who was Pier Paolo Pasolini? Pasolini was the most important postwar intellectual in Italy, period. Like a Renaissance polymath, he was adept at journalism, the novel, poetry, screenwriting, directing motion-pictures, painting and drawing, and more. The polymath also liked cruising teenage boys, was a walking scandal, and yet paradoxically truly was the conscience of postwar Italy until his murder on November 2nd, 1975. He could only be an irritant in the culture he arose in, and he pricked the conscience of a nation. It's likely that he engineered his own murder, placing its date on the day of the dead as a frame...

Pasolini's revolutionary philosophy was simultaneously opposed to fascism and communism, and he had many enemies in the political arena, as well as the religious one with the Vatican. All said, however, it's possible that Pier Pasolini was murdered by a right wing assassination team under the aegis of "GLADIO," a NATO program of secret armies throughout Western Europe. GLADIO began, ostensibly, as a defense against a hypothetical Soviet invasion of Europe.

Overall, GLADIO was more often used to attack legitimate leftist political parties, trade unions, and populist groups. GLADIO operations were responsible for breaking the Marseilles dock strikes in the late 1940s as just one example of their handiwork. Their activities in Italy during the Cold War are known to be extensive. Italy is a flashpoint, a fixed, coordinate in the nexus of control of the Western power structure.

In Italy, the Red Brigade bombings in the 1970s were even instigated by GLADIO operatives to justify a law and order crackdown on the Italian Communist Party who were poised to take power at that time. It's a mystery as to how much influence the CIA had in all of this. The existence of the P-2 conspiracy (oddly, involving the Vatican, the CIA, KGB, and renegade Freemasons!) had yet to break in the international media. All this aside, there were dozens of politically motivated killings in 1970s Italy, and Pasolini's was just one of many.

One has to ponder the Vatican's involvement in his murder, as they were a primary adversary of Pasolini. And so, Salo enters this bloody fray. It could not be more controversial, and it's a scream of rage against how little we all really care about or value human life. Pasolini was outraged and disappointed with the human condition, and Italian politics had become a bloody chaos, leading director Sergio Leone to remark at the time that, "Italian politics have become ridiculous." Both directors were friends.

The scenario of Salo is fairly simple: a group of Italian fascists retreat to a palace in Northern Italy (where there was a great deal of support for Italian fascism and the Monarch) with a group of sixteen captive boys and girls. One is a bishop, a judge, a politician, and-so-on, representing symbols of established authority. It is Mussolini's short-lived Republic of Salo, created especially for him by the disintegrating Nazi regime. Hence, "Salo" is a title that almost any Italian of the 1970s (or today) might recognize. For 120 days, they degrade their victims in almost every imaginable--and unimaginable--manner.

There is homosexual rape, sundry forms of buggery, forcing people to eat excrement, forced heterosexual couplings, forced marriage, sadism of every kind, and finally, death. Just about everything you could imagine occurs, and worse. Of course, it's all based loosely on De Sade's tale and stays pretty close to the text's themes and scenarios.

Pasolini chapters each section with some of the structure of Dante's "Inferno," which is a real mark of his genius. One can even sense an atavistic Manichean influence in the work, which isn't surprising: Friuli has been historically known as an ancient citadel on the Northern "boot" of Italy, where the ideas of the world hating sect are still evident in the local culture. Pasolini's home state, Friuli, has been thought of as a place of subversion for centuries.

The Italian polymath understood that, under the right circumstances, we are all capable of these depredations. This is a lesson that he and others learned during the resistance to Italian and German fascism in Italy during WWII. Pasolini witnessed and experienced injustices committed by the partisans, losing his own brother to a firing squad.

There's a little Hitler in everyone, and we all the potential to become assassins under the proper conditions. Beyond that, To say this film is merely a statement on fascism would be wrong--it's a manifesto on what cruelty rests within all human hearts, especially once one has supped on power. In Salo and his other works in other mediums, Pasolini is saying that humanity has a dark heart and that nothing is really true.

This was the point that "Italy's conscience" had reached artistically by 1975, though his existential crisis regarding the future of humanity had begun much earlier. Salo was always lurking there in Pasolini's mind, waiting for its time to emerge. Some online reviewers have stated that they didn't find the film shocking--they should check themselves into a clinic somewhere, as Salo is beyond shocking. But it should be remembered that De Sade was only writing about the sexual habits of his kind--the aristocracy before the French Revolution of 1789. De Sade wasn't simply trying to shock. He was chronicling the sexual tastes and behaviors of the French aristocracy before the revolution.

I've noticed that even avid fans of contemporary directors such as Takashi Miike respect the power of this film. Miike has some similarities in theme and style with Pasolini, but goes for a more genre, stylized look (it's not the heady 1970s anymore). Even John Waters lists this film as sicker than his own worst offenders. It could be argued that Desperate Living (1977) is an oblique spoof of Salo. To say I was shocked by this film would be an understatement. But, besides being pretty sick, this film looks astonishingly lush and challenges the audience by shoving the beautiful and the grotesque in our faces. This is another aspect of Pasolini's genius of showing us depredations in such a lovely setting.

Salo transcends the subversive and never fails to shock. The late Tonnino della Colli's cinematography lends the film a look that could be hung in the Louvre, and it gives the film a greater subversive edge overall. Several of the shot compositions resemble well-known works of Western art. Della Colli was director of photography for Fellini, Sergio Leone, and many other classic Italian directors. It should be noted that the film is not "legitimately available" in the United State for copyright reasons. However, there are very good copies out there even though it's not in print. I found a copy that's an exact duplicate of the original US edition for a decent price, so it is out there to be found with a little searching.

The Criterion edition is reportedly the most expensive collector's DVD in the world, going for as much as $1,000.00 USD. [Ed., 08.31.2008--Which is now probably devalued with the new Criterion edition.] This was the best transfer in 1998, but it appears that there is a new continental European DVD purported to be definitive, as well as a BFI edition that's unexceptional. This writer possesses a few Ken Russell DVDs ("Salome's Last Dance") that are worth as much as $300.00 USD, so this is a shocker! It's funny to see used DVDs of the big Hollywood fare at $3.99 USD, while these are in the hundreds! It says a lot about what is lasting and meaningful to people, and it's not blockbuster movies.

A dubious company called "Water Bearer" has a set of Pasolini's other works, but I have it on good word that they are of extremely poor quality and aren't restored and come from aging 35mm prints. It would be nice if Criterion did a Pasolini Box that included a new HD transfer of "Salo" with extensive restoration. Salo is one of the most important films ever made. We all stand accused, even the filmmaker, and that's the point. Be forewarned: not for children or adults who fear soul-searing, raw existentialism. So, why? Why would anyone want to watch this? 

NOTE: The "ass-judging-scene" is similar to photos of the "flesh pyramid" at Abu-Ghraib. The new Criterion edition will bring a fresh reassessment of this Italian masterpiece, with only the omission of one extraneous 25 second scene. It will be HD from the best film elements. Brace yourselves.

(Revised 07.06.2008)

[Ed., 10.05.2008--I see no reason why Pasolini couldn't have been murdered by various rightist elements, while at the same time having brought it about purposefully. Why not?]

Ken Russell's Whore (1991, Unrated version) review

The comments over the years on this film are both amusing and frustrating, and I just hope Mr. Russell has read a few of them, as it would probably tickle him to-no-end. Come on, people: this is the real deal here, and these are most of the realities of prostitution. It isn't pretty or glamorous, is it? How much value is attached to the life of a prostitute?

Ask the King County sheriff's Department and the Seattle Police Department--they allowed the Green River killer to run riot for 20+ years thanks to their own rampant hatred and bigotry towards prostitutes. That hatred also exists throughout our culture and in the minds and attitudes of many Americans.

 

This is a pure film for Ken Russell, and a compassionate statement for the victims of prostitution, namely, the whores. Legalization is (wisely) advocated, and we even treated to a few of the arguments for it (from a pimp-character himself) and what some of the drawbacks would be: no bribes for the dirty cops and politicians, no control by pimps and politicians (the same thing) of these women over their own bodies, proper regulation of sexually-transmitted diseases, and-so-on. In other words, there are numerous elements of our society who benefit from the status quo of prostitution. But what other reasons for keeping prostitution illegal are there? The emancipation of the victims. This doesn't support the current social order, therefore...
It would also mean the prostitutes would get the biggest-cut, which is anathema to these bastards. If prostitutes controlled the business as many of them did before the early-20th century, they would be very powerful women indeed, and a social force to be reckoned with. They would be revolutionaries. Sex is a nexus of control as well as a doorway to liberation. At one time, so-called "madams" were some of the greatest benefactors to charities and progressive social movements. Legalization of prostitution is a key towards emancipation of its victims, offering needed regulation of STDs, as well as a previously untapped flow of tax-revenues that would be dramatic.

Currently, several developed nations are going in this direction, but the USA prefers sticking with policies that the Saudi Royal Family would approve of. Leave the whores alone, just ensure that they have health care, are taxed like everyone else, and aren't vulnerable to murder anymore. It seems that that's asking too much, so demands are going to have to be made eventually. There are other reasons why prostitution is illegal...
 
One should remember that it was rich women in America who got the profession criminalized--partly to stop their rich husbands from frequenting them. Not that it ever worked--they're still doing it anyway, even as I write this. Prostitution is illegal for means of social control, period. Ever notice how the rich and powerful are obsessed by what the "other-half" does in the bedroom? Puritans are the most sexually-obsessed people there are. Watch this film, and you will understand that Mr. Russell is a genuine Christian with a heart. After all, Jesus consorted with such people, didn't he? They need our help and our compassion, which is the main theme of this film.
 
Ken Russell appears to enjoy the inherent bawdiness of the material-at-hand, or he wouldn't be Ken Russell, would he? The dialog itself is a dream, and David Mamet's plays/screenplays would be a good analogy, very hardcore and street level. This is because the dialog came from real prostitutes and their stories, almost making this a social document of when it was made, and it will surely still be relevant so long as it's a crime in this nation or any nation. As a matter of fact, the original play it was based on was written by a former lady of the night.

While some have commented on the low-budget look of the film, I don't think that this is accurate. It compositions look slick and well-conceived for maximum impact, and cinematography-wise it's simply gorgeous. Many of the scenes are shot in a color-coded style for various characters and scenarios, and it works well as it did in Russell's "Crimes of Passion" (1984). The reasons for these opinions come from the fact that no new format versions have been produced, and so we're left with shoddy-transfers from VHS and Laserdisc copies from the early-1990s.

All that aside, Theresa Russell (no relation to the writer/director) is astonishing in her portrayal of a woman trapped in "the life," she wants out desperately, and it's more than she ever bargained for. This is anthropologically correct. Like Kathleen Turner, Russell is easily one of the greatest actresses of her generation, and she proves it in this role as Turner did in "Crimes." She shows us the sorrow of prostitution, while simultaneously projecting her sexuality as an actor, which is a real trick. 
 
If you enjoyed Crimes of Passion nearly as much as I did (I consider it a masterpiece), this will be a wonderful companion-film for you, dear viewers. You either love or hate Ken Russell, and he has always been my favorite form of a high-stress personality endurance test. Most tend to fail this test, but it takes all kinds, doesn't it? Russell's genius in this film is using the iconography of our sexualized culture (including crass imagery from advertising), and throws it in our face showing the ugliness and emptiness behind the commodification of sex and our bodies.

This is a real accomplishment considering how great the film looks and its stress on stylization and an interesting aestheticizing of sexual imagery pack a potent punch. Nonetheless, Russell succeeds here, and the ultimate lessons on prostitution are significantly different from the hollow Hollywood portrayal of the trade in "Pretty Woman" (1990). In fact, it's the obverse. "Whore's" grim portrayal brings us the core-truths of prostitution through style and composition on a classically-structured silver platter.

We are confronted with many of the reasons why women become prostitutes (from their perspective), why many can never escape it, and how many of them--because of their vocation--can never enjoy sex ever again. Once it hits DVD (sometime around the Apocalypse), it will finally be able to be reassessed properly, as some of Russell's canon has recently.

That it shines so brightly on my unrated VHS copy is a testament to its inherent brilliance, and to the genius of director Ken Russell. "Whore" contains a message to be heeded regarding the "world's oldest profession," and that's that sex has little to do with the motivations behind it.

Puritans, take heed: it shouldn't be a problem to say it. Give this man money to make another feature film! Ken recently discussed the making of Whore on the UK's version of Celebrity Big Brother, and he was a hit!

Revised 08.31.2008

The Birth of Pop: Ken Russell's "Lisztomania" (1975) review

To many, this film is the stunning proof that director Ken Russell never had it and that idiocy and egotism were mistaken for genius. You could say mistaking idiocy and egotism for genius has been the appeal of rock music all along!

Others might say that Russell is simply childish or immature, and that his films are the "masturbatory fantasies" of an overgrown-adolescent. This belief is unfounded. Consider this film part-autobiography and the problems faced by most artists who have to battle for control over the direction of their work with their backers, their "patrons." Before there was even a notion of "capitalism," artists have had to fight to protect their visions from the very people they're dependent on to realize those dreams.

Is this film over-indulgent? Yes it is, dear readers, very-much-so, because it is art and not entertainment. That said, if you chuck any expectations, this is also a funny film and allegory about the rise of pop culture in the 19th Century.

Russell's Lisztomania ( phrase coined while the composer was at the height of his powers) draws parallels between Liszt's fame and that other generally hollow spectacle known as "rock." That's not to say Russell dislikes Liszt's music or that he views it as meaningless--the contrary is true. What Russell hates is the empty spectacle. But this is great filmmaking, and it should be noted that it has similarities between itself and another film of the same year, "Rocky Horror," and even "Hedwig and the Angry Inch," as they examine and explore the relationships between sexuality and pop culture. It really is true that women threw their underwear at Franz Liszt during his performances and that he had many-many lovers, 19 th century "proto-groupies."

Lisztomania is also that very odd bridge between "classic" arena rock and the emergent punk movement of the time. The film can be seen as a statement that "rock" is not really subversive or rebellious at all, but ultimately arch-conservative and repressive. Amen. It's just a hilarious, wild romp that will make your guests extremely nervous, which films all great films should do. Movies should challenge people to think and reflect, at least occasionally.

Ironically (or perhaps not-at-all), Mr. Russell had previously contracted Malcolm MacLaren and Vivienne Westwood to design the S&M costumes for his film, "Mahler." It should also be noted that "Liszt-O-Mania" was released exactly the same year that MacLaren's shop "SEX" shop opened on King's Row; the rest is, as they say, history. It couldn't be more camp considering it has Little Nell in it, but it would be without her.

Basically put, this is about the the ins-and-outs of "why" we want and need pop culture and WHAT we generally want from our "pop idols" (sex and some form of wish-fulfillment, naturally). One could say this film criticizes the absurd spectacle that rock had become by 1975, and this theme pops-up often throughout the film, but Russell was never a fan. No, this psychological comic book portrait goes much deeper into the relationship between artist and patron. Nowadays, the patrons are the mass audience, something that was just emerging from the industrial and commercial age. Once, it was just the aristocracy, now the mob has been added.

Sexuality is about mass psychology, so Wilhelm Reich gets-his-due here in some areas, and there is a plethora of Freudian imagery, which is something you expect from Russell. Lisztomania is certainly a very personal film for the director and probably amuses him as much as it does myself that it enrages so many critics (definitely a "get-screwed" message to all of them), but it should be noted that some of the absurdity and excess came from the producer of the film, not Mr. Russell. The enfant terrible director has complained about the opening country song in his autobiography "Altered States," and that there were other aspects of the production he didn't want in the film. Perhaps. Yet Russell tends to enrage all the right people, and that's what at least some film-making should be.

God love this lapsed Catholic, and God love his ways. Lisztomania is a flawed part of his canon, but a very watchable and educational one. As Russell began his career doing documentaries and impressionistic films on composers for the BBC, it makes a kind of sense that this is considered one of his most heretical works since it goes well beyond his work for television in the 1960s...until one becomes aware of his banned "Dance of the Seven Veils" about Richard Strauss.

Critics of the film tend to trot out the BBC documentaries as a yardstick, yet this isn't so far removed from "Dance of the Seven Veils," a film that also utilized the same psychosexual comic book approach of Strauss's and Hitler's fateful relationship. Liszt and Wagner's fateful relationship is portrayed in similar terms and imagery, namely that of National Socialism. Dance of the SevenVeils got him booted from the BBC for nearly twenty years. It's hard to generalize about Russell's career, except perhaps on a thematic level, but he's always willing to rile.

It's interesting to note that the 1980s was the period of his purest work, due mainly to a three-picture deal with the now-defunct Vestron pictures. But the standard view of many of his sharpest critics is that it was a fallow decade. The opposite is true.

The 1970s were actually a very mixed-bag for Russell, as evinced by Lisztomania and Valentino, and he continued to struggle for artistic control over his films as the decade rolled-on. He isn't entirely pleased with Lisztomania, but Russell definitely had some fun with the material, and so, there it is. This is hardly one of his best films and surely not his worst. What it is is a real laugh riot. I think it's a hoot, which means it isn't on DVD.

Ken Russell's The Devils (1971) review

Ken Russell is a director you either hate or love--I'm with the latter, and enjoy irritating the same targets Russell does, endlessly. The simple fact that many of Ken Russell's films are hated makes me love them all-the-more. This is arguably his best film, and his only political one.

As a period-piece, this film is stylized, but looks very convincing, and the cinematography by Dick Bush and set designs by late-and-great Derek Jarman (another genius of film) are stellar.

Consider why films like this one aren't made often, and you may have part of the answer as to why this film is still so shocking. Many people dislike Russell's films because of what he reveals about all of us, but that's too bad. People didn't like what Auschwitz said about humanity, but there it is, forever.

Apparently, Warner Brothers has finally-decided to release this film as a director's-cut in 2006, or 2007 [Ed.--2008 and still waiting...]. It is being reported that all footage removed by the BBFC and American censors (mainly at Warners) in 1971 will be reinstated in an "unrated cut" approved by the director. Some very good prints have been circulating around Los Angeles, New York City, and London recently...

The film "The Devils" may have been taken from the Aldous Huxley book, and the 1960s play by John Whiting, but it's squarely Ken Russell's film from-beginning-to-end.

Also likely to be included on a future DVD is the excellent BBC documentary by Mark Kermode ("Hell on Earth"), about the making of the film, and the firestorm it created. The "renegade" DVD by Angelfire is acceptable, and will have to tide us over until then, but there is one by "Trash Palace" that looks even better (though minus the inclusion in the feature film of the deleted scenes). Both the Angelfire version and the Trash Palace edition has the aforementioned Kermode documentary, and a widescreen transfer (1.85:1, the wrong aspect-ratio, the film was lensed in Panavision at 2.35:1) of the film. Only the Angelfire version contains the "Rape of Christ" scene reinstated.

This was a film that Warner Brothers hated after the executives saw the final cut in a studio screening. The Warner pressbook itself even states that it was going to be a hard-sell, with posters marketing the film as horror. It is horrific, but really constitutes a political allegory. Some of the posters warned potential audiences that it was a film "most people won't like"! It did reasonably good business, but wasn't a hit, though it could be assumed that the studio made their money back.

In a film that bombards the viewer with violence, decay, plague, and death, it isn't surprising that people miss some of the film's thematic points: The Devils comments on the eternal threat to individual rights and spiritual liberty from irrationality, social hysteria, and authoritarianism, and that they're often played-out in the same ways in different eras. You can see this in the comparisons made between Oliver Reed's character Father Grandier, and that of the accepted Christology of 17th century France (orthodoxy being represented by the characters of Father Mignon, Sister Jeanne and Cardinal Richelieu--an unholy trilogy?).

Is there much difference in why Grandier is degraded similarly to Christ? Russell (a Catholic)goes radically further: is there any difference between the political scapegoating of Urbain Grandier and Jesus of Nazareth? What's truly degraded is the Gospel of Christ and St. Francis. "The crowd" appears to be swayed in either direction, with a tendency towards hysteria and authoritarianism, making for a grim message indeed. But, this is generally what happened to Loudon, its inhabitants, Grandier, and France, at the time of the story.

Russell tells us that Richelieu's yearnings for theocratic power can only be seen as a threat to liberty, just as they are now in the Middle East and the United States. Russell seems to be saying that these political and spiritual struggles are one-and-the-same, and that they require an eternal vigilance against them. This is not an exploitation film, but it is as dark and horrific as any classic tale of horror. What's most horrifying is that it's true.

Keep-in-mind that not one image is in this film "by mistake," as Russell composes his framing for a specific meaning and purpose just as the old masters did. This film is a warning against the aims of power, and shines a ray of artistic truth on why Christ was crucified to boot. There are numerous tableaux that could have come from Goya or Bosch.

The images of people being tortured, vomiting, acting hysterically--they are not there to merely to shock, but as a warning about social hysterias that have a tendency to recur throughout human history. Repression can lead to greater perversions and tyranny, states Russell, and resoundingly. Set specifically in 17th Century France after the eight Hugenot Wars, "The Devils" should be read as a cautionary tale on how people willingly give-up their liberties during uncertain times...times not unlike our own.

The religious and cultural wars still rage on, and will continue to for the foreseeable future.

Why a restoration is necessary: a long-overdue reassessment will come with the world finally being able see what director Ken Russell intended. World culture might see this film being very influential (it already is), and not just in spawning exploitation fare. Italian genre filmmakers were inspired by this film when they began churning-out "nunsploitation" cinema! Good lapsed Catholics, all, I can assure you. This is what the "Grand Guignol" was based-on, the real deal. From the 1600s-to-now, the threats are essentially the same. Only the technology has changed.

Bother Warner Bros. into releasing this classic at: www.warnerbros.com