Beat The Devils

If you've been following my Twitter feed you know The Devils, briefly available on iTunes, has been withdrawn. No explanation was given, but I'm not smelling some censorship scandal. Warner Bros, did put the 103-minute version out on VHS in 1995, so it has some history with the title, and I assume its reappearance in a form unseen since the early 70s means some sort of DVD release is in the offing. More likely, as has been suggested, WB's digital distribution team jumped the gun and placed it on ITunes unthinkingly.

This morning I got a Facebook message from a person asking if I could send the file I had purchased to him. I was leery of this, and put off altogether when he said he would then place it on one of those dubious file sharing sites for the cultural good. I'm no angel--I've purchased plenty of gray-market tapes and DVD-Rs from as-reputable-as-possible sources, sometimes in near-unwatchable form. You get what you pay for, and sometimes a lot less. My purchases include that bootleg of the UK Devils telecast I had previously mentioned.

But here we have a pristine copy that, if released, may discourage WB from ever putting it out. And that would be a tragedy. I'm upset that the studio hasn't put it out, either, particularly when there's a Russell commentary available to go with it. But I'm willing to wait for the best possible presentation, and see my file as a bridge to that. I'd gladly give it up for a disc, as I have my gray-market boots when better became legitimately available. How many others ripping it off "Pirate Bay" can say the same?

One more thing: Maybe iTunes will zap my file and I'll get issued a credit, rendering the whole thing moot. And another: Russell will be presenting what's said to be the 111-minute cut from July 31-Aug. 1 at the Film Society of Lincoln Center, part of a nine-film retrospective. Hmm, that's getting a lot of circulation these days; maybe I'm a little self-satisfied owning my 108-minute version.

Downloading The Devils

Even by the anything-goes standards of the irrepressible Ken Russell, there's nothing quite like The Devils (1971), which shocked audiences in 1971, and shocks us today, both for its "not for the squeamish" content (to quote Leonard Maltin) and when we consider what the studios were up to in 1971. Today, we get so-called "torture porn"; back then, we got a film that doesn't flinch from hysterical depravity, then comes to a sharply moral point, much harder than the so-called "lessons" absorbed ad knee-jerk from Saw I-VI. With name actors, too, in Oliver Reed and Vanessa Redgrave, both fearsomely committed to this fire-and-brimstone Aldous Huxley adaptation.

I saw the movie in college, at a raucous midnight screening that ultimately silenced a bunch of jaded kids. Seeing it again has been a challenge, as Warner Bros., which at one point edited the film to play on a double bill with The Exorcist, turned its back on it. I recall a panned-and-scanned tape that was, at best, a feeble representation of its strikingly produced self. There was a UK telecast of a more complete version, never released, that was available through grey-market sources--and it had its own issues, though it was a welcome bastard, complete with a fine documentary. A few years back Russell said that he had prepared a commentary for a hotly requested and long-overdue release. The rest has been silence.

But, to paraphrase Tennessee Williams, "Sometimes there's The Devils so quickly." In late May a gorgeous, anamorphic widescreen print of the film, as seen in its initial US and UK release, turned up--not as a Warner DVD, or as part of the Warner Archive, but on iTunes, where it can be rented or purchased by anyone out there, no region codes or all that nonsense. I've rented films for online viewing before, but this was The Devils, so I paid my $9.95 (several dollars less than a DVD or Archive release) and downloaded the movie.

I was taken aback when iTunes said that that the 1.2GB file would take six hours to download. The job was finished, though, in less than an hour. I'd have paid a lot more if iTunes could add two free hours for me to watch it, but what I scanned through was in fantastic shape. Call me old school: I'd rather have a physical product in my hot little hands, an Archive release as no frills as this one or, preferably, a pressed DVD with the UK doc and Russell's commentary. (This may be the teaser for that.) For now, though, The Devils has possessed my MacBook Pro. What other hidden gems are up on iTunes, I wonder?

UPDATE: iTunes giveth, iTunes taketh away: The Devils has been exorcised from the site. Bound for DVD perhaps?