Horror so 'depraved' it was banned in multiple countries to be shown legally for first time in 55 years

A horror movie so controversial it was condemned by the Vatican is set to be shown in cinemas in the UK for the first time legally in the 55 years since it was released.

The film, which is widely considered to be a masterpiece, was the subject of extreme censorship upon its release in 1971, with the movie only releasing under an X-rating in the UK after several cuts were made.

In recent years however many films have been re-examined due to more relaxed classification laws, with Salò recently being given a rare re-release by the BFI despite it having been outright banned for 24 years.

Salò has arguably not been as censored as The Devils though because, whilst it may be considered by many to be ‘most disturbing movie ever made’, it was approved in 2000 to be aired with no cuts.

The Devils was directed by the controversial yet beloved British director Ken Russell and follows a 17^th-century French priest with eccentric views on sex and religion who is slandered as a ‘satanist’ by a Cardinal looking to gain control of the country.

The Devils faced severe censorship in order to be released, but the director’s cut was never allowed to be shown

The Devils is a heavily religious film that includes graphic sex and violence. Who could be offended by that? (Warner Bros)

The film contained extreme sexual content and violence, which when combined with the movie’s extreme religious imagery had an unsurprisingly controversial reception.

This led to the extreme cuts in the UK to achieve an X rating, though 17 local councils still banned it, and outright bans in countries such as Ireland, Malaysia, Chile, and Finland, where it remained banned until 2001.

Speaking about the movie’s censorship James Ferman, the secretary of the British Board of Film Classification (BBFC) said: “It's a particular moment in censorship history when all the

controversial issues of censorship came together and outraged the public before the film was even seen because of the style and it's a very irreverent style.

“Many members of the board thought it was excessive and thought it was shameful and disreputable and not something that we should support and needed to be to be uh cut very heavily.”

He pointed out however that the BBFC secretary at the time, John Trevelyan, who went to bat for Russell and prevented further cuts from ruining the film, as happened in America where Russell decried the version shown in US cinemas as having ruined his vision due to the editing forced by censorship.

The Devils was finally screened for the first time in full earlier this year, and this version of the film will receive its first UK screening soon

Amongst the most shocking scenes to cause cuts were one called the ‘rape of Jesus Christ’, described by the BBC as ‘a large statue of Christ [being] assaulted by a variety of rampaging naked nuns’, along with an equally controversial in which a nun uses a heavily charred leg bone of an executed character to masturbate.

These scenes, amongst others, were cut from the version aired in cinemas and, despite a long campaign from famous film critic Mark Kermode, the movie has never been aired in full until this year.

Russell died in 2011 (Martyn Goodacre/Getty Images)

After years of campaigning a full director’s cut called Ken Russell’s The Devils was shown at the Cannes Film Festival earlier this year.

Now though the BFI have announced that they will be holding a screening later this year on 30 October 2026, with a major BFI Southbank retrospective next year of Ken Russell’s work.

Stuart Brown, the BFI Director of Programme and Distribution said: “Ken Russell’s The Devils is one of the great masterpieces of British cinema: a film of astonishing imagination, searing power and dazzling formal brilliance.”