Russell's 'rape of Christ' to be shown

An orgiastic scene directed by Ken Russell for his classic film The Devils is to be shown publicly for the first time, 31 years after it was released.

The sequence, which involves demented nuns "raping" a statue of Christ, was cut by the censor from the 1971 movie and was thought to have been destroyed. But it was found by the film critic Mark Kermode in a film-storage warehouse and will be screened by Channel 4 in a special programme about The Devils next Monday.

The film, starring Oliver Reed and Vanessa Redgrave, was highly controversial. Based on Aldous Huxley's book on demonic possession in 17th-century France, The Devils had scenes of torture, and nuns driven nearly crazy by the threat of execution.

Among the cuts enforced on the film was the scene known as the "Rape of Christ", in which the Ursuline nuns, seemingly under demonic possession, remove a life-sized crucified image of Christ from the wall of the nunnery and engage in sexual acts with it. The scene was the culmination of a black mass.

The four-minute section is described in one British Film Institute reference book as "a "quite dazzling and disturbing montage of images which brought things to a shattering climax". Russell called it "some of my finest work".He tells the programme: "It was one of the most mind-blowing sequences ever censored ... it was always a truncated episode ... in this sequence it's as though they [the nuns] have been exploited to a point of total blasphemy of their religion and that's what the authorities wanted and that's what led to the destruction of the city."

Hell on Earth, made by Lucida Productions for Channel 4, will be shown on 25 November at 11.10pm. The Devils will be screened after the documentary at 12.15am.