Filmsuck

Host Eileen Jones is joined by writer and cinephile Alex Deley in celebrating Ken Russell's THE DEVILS, a 1971 film so controversial in its day that it was heavily censored, then banned in many countries, then released but rated X in the UK and USA, then critically reviled—Roger Ebert gave it zero stars—and then made very hard to find for decades. Now with a director's cut finally and fully restored in 4K, with an upcoming theatrical re-release, we can access and fully appreciate the brilliance of Russell's best film.

Based on Aldous Huxley's 1952 book THE DEVILS OF LOUDUN, and John Whiting's 1960 stage adaptation THE DEVILS, the film concerns the appalling historical records of a 1634 case of demonic possession overtaking the nuns at an Ursuline convent in Loudun, France, which was supposedly achieved by the sorcery of the dissolute but popular priest Father Urbain Grandier (played by Oliver Reed). The tormented abbess, Sister Jeanne des Anges (Vanessa Redgrave) falsely accuses Grandier of being in league with the devil, which suits the plans of Catholic statesman Cardinal Richelieu, who’s consolidating state power by crushing the authority of the feudal lords. Their walled and fortified cities include Loudun, and Grandier has served as a defiant champion of the people of Loudun. His brutal and carnivalesque trial, torture, and execution is a gruesome public spectacle precipitating Loudun’s destruction.

Russell called this his most political film, saying it represents “what happens when the state takes over.”

The only film that actor Charles Laughton directed is the now-celebrated NIGHT OF THE HUNTER (1955), a unique, nightmarish, dark fairy tale vision that's part of the "Southern Gothic" series of films currently running on the Criterion Channel.

The film's an adaptation of Davis Grubb's 1953 novel, which in turn was based on the real-life Depression-era case of Harry Powers, a serial killer who answered lonely-hearts ads and then murdered widows for their life savings, killing several of their children in the process. Powers was hanged in West Virginia in 1932. In THE NIGHT OF THE HUNTER, the phony preacher "Reverend" Harry Powell (Robert Mitchum) targets Willa Harper (Shelley Winters), the widow of a bank robber who was hanged without ever divulging where he stashed the $10,000 he got away with. Once he's married to the doomed Willa, Harry Powell zeroes in on her children, John (Billy Chapin) and Pearl (Sally Jane Barnes), who clearly know where the money's hidden.

Soon the orphaned children have to flee downriver to escape the predatory killer on their trail. They're taken in by a self-sufficient farm-woman, Miss Rachel Cooper (Lillian Gish), who cares for needy children found wandering the roads during the Depression. Inevitably, there's an epic standoff between Miss Cooper and Harry Powell, with the fate of John and Pearl hanging in the balance.

Co-hosts Eileen and Dolores provide a rundown on what's on TV, which starts off as a cheerful endeavor and ends up in a state of despondency over our grim cultural moment.

We report on the third season in twenty years of THE COMEBACK, the HBO Max cringe comedy starring Lisa Kudrow as Valerie Cherish, an eternally optimistic and terminally obtuse former TV sitcom star of the late 1980s-‘90s trying to get her career going again in the age of reality TV, AI, influencers, and online everything. Dolores also describes the "death-drive" third season of HBO Max's EUPHORIA, and Eileen despairs over an assortment of hellish offerings including the LORD OF THE FLIES miniseries (Netflix), the second season of BEEF (Netflix), the new David E. Kelley series MARGO'S GOT MONEY TROUBLES (Apple TV+), and the nostalgia-driven return of the hit aughts sitcom SCRUBS (Hulu).

Filmsuck co-hosts enjoy the old-fashioned movie-fun of watching what's essentially one long chase in the new Steven Spielberg action-adventure DISCLOSURE DAY. It's his return to sci-fi alien-invasion-themed movies that are a specialty of his represented by CLOSE ENCOUNTERS OF THE THIRD KIND (1977), E.T. THE EXTRA-TERRESTRIAL (1982), and WAR OF THE WORLDS (2005). It's true that DISCLOSURE DAY might be sappy and absurdly implausible and have an ending that falls so flat it causes audience members to exclaim "What the hell?" But on the other hand, it's a Spielberg summer blockbuster just like we used to see in the olden times. Get it while you can.

Co-hosts Eileen and Dolores praise the complex and ultimately harrowing Susannah Herbert documentary NATCHEZ, currently streaming on YouTube and Apple TV+ and soon to arrive at PBS. It focuses on the engine driving this Mississippi River port town's economy, which is tourism—specifically the guided tours through plantation houses that have, for nearly a hundred years, "stuck to the script" of the romantic fantasy of the gracious Old South. However, new tour guides and local activists, several of them Black locals, have emerged recently who insist on factually accurate tours that include the history of slavery and the people held in bondage who actually built those plantation houses and kept them running. In exploring the tensions around this issue in Natchez, a town of complex demographics that is considered a politically progressive "blue dot in a sea of red," Herbert gets representative citizens to talk more and more freely—and sometimes appallingly—about what they really think of their fraught history and current experience.