It's a tremendously sad day for fans of gonzo cinema everywhere, as legendary madman director Ken Russell has shuffled off this mortal coil at the age of 84. Over the course of his wildly eccentric career, he forged an enduring and tempestuous artistic partnership with fellow worshipper at the altar of excess Oliver Reed, who starred in Russell's film version of D.H. Lawrence's Women in Love and co-starred in the day-glo, psychedelic, emotionally powerful screen adaptation of The Who's Tommy. Russell also reteamed with Roger Daltrey for the bizarre Lizstomania, which echoed his earlier interest in bringing the lives of classical composer to life with the Tchaikovsky-centric The Music Lovers and 1974's Mahler. You could say that the ebbs and flows, the manic emotions and dramatic lulls of classical music perfectly mirrored Russell's own auteurist bent.
But, of course, the two films that give Russell explicit relevance in this thread are 1988's Lair of the White Worm (which holds the honor of being the first ever premiere at a Columbus Horror Marathon) and none other than what is possibly his strongest collaboration with Reed: The Devils. In many ways, the film is not a traditional horror film, and there are still longtime Nightmarathoids whose only memory of it involves glimpses of naked nuns invading their half-conscious vision during its late night screening at the 1992 Night of the Living Drexel. But The Devils remains a deeply disturbing film, ever more relevant as the years pass for its depiction of religious hysteria and some very real human monsters. It's also one of the more difficult films to see today, never released on legitimate DVD and still scorned by the suits at Warner Brothers (for an excellent look at the enduring controversy, check out longtime friend of the Marathon Marc Edward Heuck's blog post on the topic.) It's no secret that Bruce and I have been dying to show this again for years; maybe now we'll find some way to make it happen.
