The notorious “Rape of Christ” sequence removed from the 1971 film “The Devils” has been restored in time for the movie’s screening next week at the New York Film Festival.
The controversial footage once feared lost features nuns sexually defiling a sculpted figure of Jesus on a crucifix, according to the Hollywood Reporter.
Director Ken Russell reportedly said in a 1995 interview that the scene nixed by censors 55 years ago was lost to history and had “probably been destroyed.”
But audiences will finally see a “privately constructed” 2004 edit of the movie made under Russell’s supervision.
“Ken Russell’s infamous adaptation of Aldous Huxley’s novel, about the apparent possession of a group of nuns after one (Vanessa Redgrave) accuses a priest (Oliver Reed) of collaborating with the devil, is at long last available in its full, uncensored splendor,” reads a promotion for the NYFF’s presentation of “The Devils” running from Oct. 15 to Oct. 20 at Lincoln Center.
The 114-minute movie is screening on 35mm film. A wider audience will have one week to see “The Devil” starting on Oct. 16 when Warner Bros.’ specialty film label Clockwork releases the enhanced reboot in theaters nationwide.
Late film critic Roger Ebert said in his 1971 review that the polarizing horror flick served as a timely metaphor for the Vietnam War, which the U.S. was fighting at the time.
“I don’t know about anyone else, but frankly, I left the Cinema Theater feeling like a new, a different, and, yes, a better person,” he wrote of the 111-minute version of the British film.