Have you seen this LATELY?

I ask because I remember seeing acid drenched Brit director Ken Russell’s CRIMES OF PASSION back in the mid 1980s & thinking it was an interesting, colorful, funny but dopey excessive sleazeathon. I remembered a gutsy performance by Kathleen Turner as the uptight fashion designer by day & platinum wigged hooker by night. I remembered a deliriously rabid performance by Tony Perkins as the demented, profanity spewing, serrated dildo waving priest. I remembered thinking how much fun it was to watch Ken Russell recklessly sail over the top and admiring him for pursuing his own wacky & unique vision. It’s for these fond remembrances that I decided to rent the DVD to watch with my boyfriend as he’d never seen it.

Seeing it again after 20 years I could only conclude: WHAT A PILE OF *beep* Holy cow, what the *beep* did I eat for breakfast the day I saw this turgid crapola & deemed it a good film?! It’s not even “so bad it’s good”. I think a lot of it had to do with the fact that I saw it at college so was probably either stoned, tripping or both. That HAS to be the main reason—I refuse to believe that my taste was ever this bad. I think part of it also had to do with when it was released. It was just after Reagan was re-elected & it was “morning in America”. The social & political climate had turned more conservative. Sex, after exploding on the screen in the 1960s & 1970s, became a more verboten subject by 1984. Film itself seemed to become more timid after the Golden Age of 1970s American cinema. A film as explicit &…well as fearlessly vulgar as CRIMES OF PASSION stood out. It was amazing to see a mainstream actress like Kathleen Turner (fresh off BODY HEAT & ROMANCING THE STONE) in a role like this & it seemed so subversive to tackle this subject matter. I just can’t believe that this sophomoric drek passed the sniff test back then.

The biggest problem with the film is that it really is just a B erotic thriller with artsy pretensions. There’s no real point to the story—save to say that an unfulfilled yearning for intimacy (sexual or otherwise) can make people do wacky things. Mainly the movie exists as a way to move from one lurid pseudo-noir carnal scene to the next.

Then there’s the dialogue, most of which seems culled from the Playboy Party Joke Page circa 1972. Sample lines of dialogue:

“If you came back here to get into my panties you can forget it—there’s already one *beep* in there”

“I never forget a face, unless of course I sat on it’

Turner’s character as the hooker dressed up as a stewardess: “although I may run out of Pan Am coffee I will never run out of TWA-T (ea)”

Another big problem is the male star of the film, John Laughlin (yeah, I know, “Who”?). Either he was screwing the casting director, had pictures of the producer with his hand up the skirt of a Girl Scout or his older brother saved the studio head from drowning…ANY of these reasons why an actor this bad got a lead role in anything but a snuff film is more plausible than the idea that he got the role on talent alone...because he HAS NONE!! My God, I’ve seen coked up whores in amateur Bukkake porn with more emotion!! Visit any grade school Christmas pageant & you’ll see more credible performances than whatever it was Laughlin did in front of the camera—I can’t find a word for it because “acting” doesn’t come close to describe it. Laughlin isn’t that handsome so even the vacant eye candy factor is missing.

Then there’s the ultra cheesy synth score by the execrable Rick Wakeman. It’s not even cheesy in that MTV mid 80s way. This tin eared headache would’ve sounded dated in a 1970s flick. Imagine the B side of a single by the worst 70s Prog Rock band you can think of & you’ll get the idea.

Another major problem is that the movie doesn’t know if it wants to be an absurdist satire (ala Lynch), a dead serious comment on modern American sexual mores or an erotic thriller. Because of the films schizophrenia it fails miserably on all three counts. Russell seems to have shot the film from the viewpoint of a heavy panting pervert in a trench coat. The sex scenes he shows in explicit detail are either really dopey such as the one where Turner, as the hooker, plays a beauty contestant while cunnilingus is performed on her. Later on she shows the trick just how she plays “the flute”, aftewr which she dramatically wipes semen off her lips (eeewww!). Then there’s the infamous scene where she has sado-masochistic sex with a cop (digs her spike heals into his thighs while sodomizing him with a night stick) which is filmed like a typical 1980s hair metal band video. However the most important sex scene of the story—the one where Laughlin & Turner have sex that supposedly is so earth shaking that it changes the course of both of their lives—is shown only in silhouette. At the moment of real emotional truth Russell totally wimps out with bad shadow puppetry. This is another example of my problem with sex in movies or mass entertainment: its always about sado masochism or fetishes, be it a classic movie like LAST TANGO IN PARIS, a lame cumstain like NINE & A HALF WEEKS, a bad coffee table book like Madonna’s SEX or this cinematic gibberish. I would’ve given Russell points for daring had he showed the scene where the 2 leads fall in love—it didn’t even have to be explicit, just shots of the actors faces would’ve done. Sure Laughlin can’t act but he’d stunk up the screen up to that point anyhow, why not show his face during coitus? Turner certainly could’ve pulled off the scene. Trying to show real intimacy, even if you fail at it, is daring. Depicting yet another S&M and fetish scene was old hat even back in 1984.

Of course the main problem is with Ken Russell himself. CRIMES OF PASSION was only his second American film (after 1980s ALTERED STATES) & the first in which he tried to make some sort of comment on American society. His tone deafness to American culture is painfully obvious. The mix & match exaggerated American accents are hard to listen to & sound like Europeans on a bad variety show trying to be Americans (although the cast is all American & includes Bruce Davidson & Annie Potts). None of the actors seem comfortable with their lines & appear to be reading cue cards. Russell directs the actors in an exaggerated & “stagey” manner that could’ve worked if he continued with the absurdist & comedic strains of the film but mixed in with the cheesy pseudo noirish aspects of the story & the hilariously sophomoric social commentary it all just falls flat. Maybe, just maybe, if Russell had a leading man who could act, a real film score composer & a producer who could’ve reigned in Russell’s more juvenile excesses this could’ve worked but as it is, CRIMES OF PASSION is just a relic & a prime example of a bad 1980s erotic thriller late night cable fodder.