When I first saw Warner Bros. Clockwork’s stylish, strobe-light-heavy, fever-dream trailer announcing the 4K director’s cut restoration of Ken Russell’s The Devils , I knew I had to see it on the big screen. Partly because I wanted to know how it earned its reputation as “the most controversial film ever made,” a relic so elusive you had to spelunk through horror-collector back channels to find it. And honestly, I wondered whether it’d add fuel to my ongoing lament that today’s films are starved of the wild, pure artistry that defined the ’70s . After seeing the film in 35mm at my beloved Music Box Theater in Chicago, I got far more than I bargained for: The Devils is the most rousing, grotesquely alive cinematic experience I’ve seen all year.

Based on Aldous Huxley’s The Devils of Loudun , The Devil s sees the secluded convent of Loudun in hysterics.…