Devilishly good

I feel compelled to follow in Wan's footsteps and say something about Ken Russell's 'The Devils', screened last night on Channel 4. Not being very well-versed in all things cinematic, I'd not even heard of the film, let alone actually watched it, and I only wish now that I'd seen it in its entirety, and the Mark Kermode documentary that preceded it. Starring Oliver Reed (whose superb performance seemed to involve a lot of sweating) and Vanessa Redgrave, 'The Devils' is a disturbing probe of the dark and twisted underbelly of Catholicism - fairly reminiscent for me, in its emphasis on obsessive and perverted sexuality and the hellish horror and fear of damnation, of some of the novels of Graham Greene and Joyce's 'A Portrait Of The Artist As A Young Man'. So, then - a combination of theology, obsession, brutality and sex culminating in Reed's character Father Grandier being burnt at the stake for being possessed by the devil. Russell seems to share the same slightly gratuitous fascination with the naked female form as Stanley Kubrick, but as someone who felt 'Eyes Wide Shut' was better than the critics made out, I can see that Russell's depiction of debauchery and orgiastic excess is far superior.