Crimes of Passion (1984)
Crimes of Passion (1984), directed by Ken Russell.
Ken Russell, Sex Doctor! Erratic as he was at film directing, it's probably best he stuck to that. I remember liking this a lot but now... well, times have changed, as has the viewer.
Our cast:
Kathleen Turner is a cold and tightly wound fashion designer by day, but after hours moonlights as "China Blue", a specialty prostitute who will do any sort of role-playing nastiness.
Anthony Perkins provides his reliably bizarre talents to enact a crazed self-loathing street preacher who wants to do something to China. Save her, kill her, something.
John Laughlin is an ordinary working guy and family man, sexually frustrated to the breaking point, who becomes enamored of China in both of her characters.
Annie Potts has the thankless role of his frigid, hectoring wife who doesn't want to hear about this sex stuff.
The good:
It is bold filmmaking, like experimental theater where the audience is meant to be uncomfortable.
Films seldom have such raw and honest conversations on sex as the midnight pillow talk of the husband and wife.
Dramatic visual design, lurid neon in the red light district, natural tones in suburbia.
The bad:
Russell has repellent notions of sex. The fantasies, costumes, smutty patter: they all drain the images of what appeal they might have. Maybe he intends that. I can't tell.
Back then the dialogue seemed like properly stylized stage-speak. Now it is just plain bad, like the writer's outline of the characters' messages or a rough first draft of what he wants them to say.
Even as overblown psychotic plot development the ending makes no sense. And what did they do with the body?
Rick Wakeman's brief score tends toward the irritating and we have to have a music video.
This is brave work by Kathleen Turner, still early in her career and already enthusiastically trying new and risky roles. By contrast, she did the soft adventure/romance Romancing the Stone (1984) the same year.
Available on Blu-ray from Arrow Video, containing both the theatrical and director's cut, which is I think just the original version before it was trimmed to earn an R rating. More porn-like explicitness, and a savage scene where China cuffs a big policeman and rides hard, including brutal work with his nightstick up his backside.
The director and writer provide a commentary track. Russell is always funny but I'm never sure how accurate. He had to leave the session and I bailed after that.
He says: the reason Anthony Perkins looks like he has slept in his clothes is that he would take them home every night and sleep in them.
