Ken Russell’s ‘The Devils’ Returns to Its X-Rated Roots With New NC-17 Rating

Well, this is certainly one way to assure fans that Ken Russell’s The Devils is finally being unleashed without compromise.

The newly restored 4K director’s cut of Russell’s controversial 1971 masterpiece has officially been rated NC-17 for “sexual content/graphic nudity” ahead of its theatrical release this October.

And there’s something incredibly appropriate about The Devils once again receiving the most restrictive rating available from the MPA.

When The Devils originally arrived in American theaters in 1971, it was released with an X rating, even after Russell had already made extensive cuts in an attempt to appease censors. Warner Bros. chose not to appeal the rating, and the American version was additionally trimmed beyond what had already been removed for the British release.

Years later, the MPAA changed the film’s rating from X to R in 1979, with an edited version subsequently becoming the version many American viewers encountered.

Now, more than 50 years later, the restored director’s cut has essentially come full circle.

Russell’s film was notoriously censored upon its original release, with some of its most provocative material removed and multiple versions circulating in the decades since. This new restoration is particularly significant because it was reconstructed according to Russell’s specific direction, referencing the edit he privately assembled in 2004 to finally provide the uncut theatrical experience he envisioned.

The restoration was assembled from the original camera negative, with the picture and sound restored by Warner Bros. Post Production Creative Services, Water Tower Color, and Warner Bros. Sound. Lucida Productions in London handled reconstruction of the director’s cut.

Starring Oliver Reed and Vanessa Redgrave, The Devils takes place in 17th-century France, where Father Urbain Grandier’s battle to protect Loudun from Cardinal Richelieu becomes entangled with a sexually repressed nun’s accusations of witchcraft and demonic possession.

More than five decades after earned an X rating and became one of the most notorious censorship battles in film history, Russell’s restored vision is finally heading back into American theaters with an .