Most Popular Movies & TV Shows Directed by Ken Russell
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Ken Russell: A Bit of a Devil
Following the recent death of Ken Russell, Alan Yentob looks back over the career of the flamboyant film director responsible for Women In Love, Tommy and The Devils. Friends and admirers - including Glenda Jackson, Terry Gilliam, Twiggy, Melvyn Bragg, Robert Powell and Roger Daltrey - recall a pioneering documentary-maker, talented photographer and fearless film director.
The Devils
In 17th-century France, Father Urbain Grandier seeks to protect the city of Loudun from the corrupt establishment of Cardinal Richelieu. Hysteria occurs within the city when he is accused of witchcraft by a sexually repressed nun.
The Kids Are Alright
Through concert performances and interviews, this film offers us a comprehensive look at the British pioneer rock group, The Who. It captures their zany craziness and outrageous antics from the initial formation of the group in 1964 to 1978. It notably features the band's last performance with long-term drummer Keith Moon, filmed at Shepperton Studios in May 1978, three months before his death.
Elgar: Fantasy of a Composer on a Bicycle
Ken Russell revisits the life of Elgar, with musical background provided by the composer's works.
Hell on Earth: The Desecration & Resurrection of The Devils
Hell on Earth is an hour-long documentary presented by Mark Kermode. It's about Ken Russell's 1971 film, The Devils which is one of the most controversial films ever made. Kermode chats to Russell as well as two of the films stars Georgina Hale and Murray Melvin. Also included are scenes that were cut from the released film for being too controversial.
Altered States
A research scientist explores the boundaries and frontiers of consciousness. Using sensory deprivation and hallucinogenic mixtures from native American shamans, he explores these altered states of consciousness and finds that memory, time, and perhaps reality itself are states of mind.
Lady Chatterley
Lady Constance Chatterley is married to the handicapped Sir Clifford Chatterley, who was wounded in the First World War. When they move to his family's estate, Constance (Connie) meets their tough-yet-quiet groundskeeper, Oliver Mellors. Soon, she discovers that the source of her unhappiness is from not being fulfilled in love, and in turning to the arms of Mellors, she has a sexual awakening that will change her thoughts forever.
The Boy Friend
The assistant stage manager of a small-time theatrical company is forced to understudy for the leading lady at a matinée performance at which an illustrious Hollywood director is in the audience scouting for actors to be in his latest "all-talking, all-dancing, all-singing" extravaganza.
Women in Love
Growing up in the sheltered confines of a 1920's English coal-mining community, free-spirited sisters Gudrun and Ursula explore erotic love with a wealthy playboy and a philosophical educator, with cataclysmic results for all four.
Isadora Duncan, the Biggest Dancer in the World
The outrageous life of the American dancer of the 1920s, Isadora Duncan, whom Ken Russell described as "part genius and part charlatan".
Crimes of Passion
Joanna Crane lives a double life. During the day she works as fashion designer but during the night she is the high class prostitute China Blue. As she is accused for industrial spying, Bobby Grady is hired to shadow her. However, they fall in love. Meanwhile a psychopathic preacher starts stalking her.
The Music Lovers
Composer, conductor and teacher Peter Ilych Tchaikovsky struggles against his homosexual tendencies by marrying, but unfortunately he chooses a wonky, nymphomaniac girl whom he cannot satisfy.
Salome's Last Dance
London, England, November 5th, 1892, Guy Fawkes Night. The famous playwright Oscar Wilde and his lover Lord Alfred Douglas discreetly go to a luxury brothel where the owner, Alfred Taylor, has prepared a surprise for the renowned author: a private and very special performance of his play Salome, banned by the authorities, in which Taylor himself and the peculiar inhabitants of the exclusive establishment will participate.
The Russia House
Barley Scott Blair, a Lisbon-based editor of Russian literature who unexpectedly begins working for British intelligence, is commissioned to investigate the purposes of Dante, a dissident scientist trapped in the decaying Soviet Union that is crumbling under the new open-minded policies.
Prisoner of Honor
France, 1897. Colonel Georges Picquart challenges the French government when he discovers the obscure political maneuvers that led to the imprisonment of the Jewish Captain Alfred Dreyfus after being convicted of espionage in 1894.
Savage Messiah
The film fictionalizes the real relationship between French sculptor Henri Gaudier and Polish writer Sophie Brzeska, twenty years his senior, who came to Paris, she says, for its “creative atmosphere.”
Faust
Mexican tenor Francisco Araiza stars as Faust, and Erich Binder conducts the Vienna State Opera and Chorus in this 1985 production of Charles Gounod's five-act opera based on Goethe's poem. In an epic tale of good versus evil, Faust sells his soul to the devil (played by Italian bass Ruggero Raimondi) and tries to save Marguerite (Slovakian soprano Gabriela Benackova) from an eternity in hell. Walton Gronroos and Alfred Sramek co-star.
The Lair of the White Worm
When an archaeologist uncovers a strange skull in a foreign land, the residents of a nearby town begin to disappear, leading to further inexplicable occurrences.
A British Picture
The updated autobiography of Britain’s most controversial film director, the maker of Women in Love, The Devils, The Music Lovers, Tommy and The Rainbow, is as unconventional and brilliant as his best films. Moving with astonishing assurance through time and space, Russell recreates his life in a series of interconnected episodes – his thirties childhood in Southampton, his first sexual experience (watching Disney’s Pinocchio), his schooldays at the Nautical College, Pangbourne, early careers in the Merchant Marine and the Royal Air Force, dancing days at the Shepherds Bush Ballet Club and of course his career as a film-maker, beginning with an extraordinary interview with Huw Weldon for a job on Monitor. Full of marvellously funny anecdotes and fascinating insights into the realities of the film director's life, A British Picture is a remarkable autobiography.
The Real Blue Nuns
An investigation into nunsploitation, and why men find images of nuns involved in sexual situations erotic. The programme also controversially covers the Muslim hibab and burka.
French Dressing
A deck-chair attendant at a British resort promotes a film festival featuring a French sexpot.
Gothic
Living in an estate on the shores of Lake Geneva, Lord Byron is visited by Percy and Mary Shelley. Together with Byron's lover Claire Clairmont, and aided by hallucinogenic substances, they devise an evening of ghoulish tales. However, when confronted by horrors, ostensibly of their own creation, it becomes difficult to tell apparition from reality.
Billion Dollar Brain
A former British spy stumbles into in a plot to overthrow Communism with the help of a supercomputer. But who is working for whom?
Lisztomania
Roger Daltrey of The Who stars as 19th century genius pianist Franz Liszt in this brash, loud and free-wheeling rock 'n' roll fantasia centered around an imagined rivalry between Liszt and composer Richard Wagner-- painted here as a vampiric harbinger of doom and destruction.
Brothers of the Head
In the 1970s a music promoter plucks Siamese twins from obscurity and grooms them into a freakish rock'n'roll act. A dark tale of sex, strangeness and rock music.
The Rainbow
Born to a rich landowner in the waning days of the Victorian era, Ursula Brangwen grows into a beautiful young woman full of imagination and ambition. The free-spirited Ursula begins to feel trapped by her prim surroundings, but her life changes when she has an erotic experience with Winifred, a bisexual teacher. From then on, Ursula puts all of her passion and creativity into the pursuit of sexual fulfillment. But her insatiable quest becomes a source of anguish.
Colour Me Kubrick
The true story of a man who posed as director Stanley Kubrick during the production of Kubrick's last film, Eyes Wide Shut, despite knowing very little about his work and looking nothing like him.
Trapped Ashes
Trapped in a house of horror, seven people discover that the only way they'll get out alive is to tell their scariest stories.
Ken Russell: In Search of the English Folk Song
This documentary begins with Ken Russell posing the question: "What is a true English folk song, if there is such a thing?" After recieving an indifferent response from his dog, Ken journeys around the countryside of England searching for an answer. He bumps into and interviews such famous artists as; Donovan, Fairport Convention, Osibisa, Eliza Carthy, So What, Edward II and The Albion Band among others.
Clouds of Glory
Dramatization by Melvyn Bragg and Ken Russell of the lives of the poets Wordsworth and Coleridge.
Il Mefistofele
Arrigo Boito's Il Mefestefele was first performed in 1868 and his most known work. In Ken Russell's modern interpretation presented by the Genoese Opera, it has Faust as an ageing hippy. He smokes marijuana and is tormented by his lost youth. Mephisto makes a bet with God that he can turn anyone to pagan life, even someone as innocent as Faust. From then on it is a battle of good against evil in a flamboyant, surreal display of primary colours, PVC costumes, nurses with swastikas, rocket trips, love and even characters dressed as Donald Duck and Mickey Mouse. Ken Russell said because the devil is always with us is his reason for the contemporary setting.
Women and Men: Stories of Seduction
This trio of tales, based on classic short stories, chronicles the complicated relations between the sexes.
The Fall of the Louse of Usher: A Gothic Tale for the 21st Century
Rock star Roddy Usher's wife is murdered and Rod is sent to a lunatic asylum in this gothic-comedy-horror-musical.
Treasure Island
Ken Russell's 1995 TV movie adaptation. This is a re-working of the Treasure Island theme with Long Jane Silver instead of Long John Silver. Hetty Baynes plays this role in the style of Marilyn Monroe.
Alice in Russialand
Documentary by Ken Russell that shows Alice traveling through a century of Russian's history, from the period of Tsarism, through Socialism and Glasnost. Alice's original characters embody ideological conflicts crossing politics, art and cultural movements.
Music for the Movies: Georges Delerue
Documentary covering the career of French composer Georges Delerue, famous for film scores for such films as Platoon, Contempt, Shoot the Piano Player, and Jules and Jim.
This is a list of the most popular movies & tv shows directed by Ken Russell. On this top list of Ken Russell movies are films such as, Ken Russell: A Bit of a Devil, The Devils, The Kids Are Alright, Elgar: Fantasy of a Composer on a Bicycle, Hell on Earth: The Desecration & Resurrection of The Devils, Mahler, Altered States, Lady Chatterley, The Boy Friend, among many other enticing movies about Ken Russell.What would you say are among the best Ken Russell movies of all time. And how many of these popular films have you seen before.