This loose interpretation of an infamous historical event in 17th-century France is based on an adaptation of Aldous Huxley’s “The Devils of Loudun,” and of the 1961 play that John Whiting based on Huxley’s 1952 book. It’s Ken Russell (“Women in Love”/The Music Lovers”) at his excessively visual best and dramatic worst as he tells the story ofthe carnal and radical Father Urban Grandier (Oliver Reed) and his downfall in those religiously charged times. Russell’s overwrought version is diabolical fun as camp but has little value as a cathartic vision. The film always looks great thanks to Derek Jarman’s dazzling eye-catching sets (such as the convent built out of white brick tiling). If you don’t take it seriously but view it more like an indigestible garishly derived Andy Warhol freak show you might not get so worked up at such outrages as masturbating nuns, continual sequences of sado-masochism and a blasphemous dream of Jesus and find it to be an idiosyncratic howler of bad taste that sensationally takes things to their most absurd points. It’s in the ‘each to his own idea of what bad taste means category,’ meaning that how it affects you is according to your own sensibilities.