While ruthless Cardinal Richelieu fantasizes about the fate of France, deep in the convent of the Ursuline nuns, the humpbacked Mother Superior (Vanessa Redgrave) is overcome by her own fantasies, erotic ones concerning the lay loins of Father Grandier (Oliver Reed). For his part, the handsome and “celibate” Grandier has sired numerous babes in the shire. The Devils depicts the seventeenth-century Church as a place where demented nuns act out orgiastic cravings and not-so-grand inquisitors mete out hot-oil enemas. The film was condemned by the Vatican upon its release in 1971, but director Russell, a converted Catholic, argued that Church and State had colluded to wrongly accuse the priest, not of congregational groping, but of acting as the devil's agent of possession, whipping the nunnery into an erotic frenzy. And, Russell added, “I don't believe there's any virtue in understatement.” Deliciously decadent, excessively hysterical, The Devils creates bedlam out of the bastions of belief.