Plot
Bobby Grady (John Laughlin) is an ordinary middle-class electronics store owner who occasionally moonlights doing surveillance work. He attends a group therapy session because his wife, Amy (Annie Potts), has lost interest in sex and he fears their marriage is in trouble.
Grady is soon approached by the owner of a fashion design house to spy on an employee, Joanna Crane (Kathleen Turner), who is suspected of selling clothing patterns to his competitors. Grady discovers the accusations are unfounded, but also finds out that Joanna is moonlighting as a prostitute using the name China Blue, and shedding her business attire for provocative clothing and a platinum wig.
Grady keeps quiet about Joanna's double life. After having an erotic encounter with her in her China Blue persona, Grady begins seeing her on a regular basis, first professionally, then romantically. However, their involvement is complicated by his guilt and her intimacy issues — not to mention her clientele of regular patrons and their bizarre sexual fetishes.
Among them is the "Reverend" Peter Shayne (Anthony Perkins), who alternately spends his time delivering soapbox sermons on the street, visiting peep shows while sniffing amyl nitrite, and patronizing prostitutes. Shayne has been seeing China Blue as a customer and declares a misguided need to "save" her. (When he says, "Save your soul, whore!", she replies, "Save your money, shithead.") Underscoring Shayne's contradictory nature is the cache of sex toys he carries in a small doctor's bag with his Bible.
Grady admits he may leave his wife and children, but Joanna feels put-upon and depressed. She seeks solace in turning tricks because the encounters are not fraught with emotional entanglements. She dominates a young policeman in an S&M session, penetrating him with his nightstick, and endures a botched three-way in a limousine. A session with a dying man whose wife wants China Blue to give him sexual gratification one last time inspires Joanna to reveal her real first name, suggesting for the first time that she is the proverbial "hooker with a heart of gold."
Shayne grows increasingly psychotic: he carries a sharpened metallic vibrator he nicknames "Superman" and starts stalking Joanna. He moves into a seedy motel next door to her nighttime place of business and watches her activities through a peephole. He also sets up a shrine with candles and numerous photos of her. Sensing that he is mentally unhinged, Joanna no longer wishes to see him, but Shayne follows her home to her actual apartment. Once there, he begs her to kill him.
Grady comes there to tell Joanna that he has left home. He hears shouting from her apartment, breaks down her door and finds someone he assumes is Joanna, cowering in terror, not realizing it is actually Shayne in her China Blue disguise. Joanna, now wearing Shayne's clothing, leaps from the shadows and stabs Shayne with the "Superman" vibrator before he can attack Grady with a large pair of scissors. Shayne dies, convinced that his sacrifice has "saved" them both.
The film ends with Grady addressing his group therapist about his new relationship with a woman named Joanna.
Production
The film was based on an original script by Barry Sandler which was read by Ken Russell. Russell says the script "offered something new in dealing with sex and family life and the masks we accept. It's a powerful subject, and I was quite taken with it, especially when I saw it dealt with these religious hucksters on tv. I know I was obsessed with these terrible preachers."[2]
Russell called it a "film about the exploitation of women, especially at the hands of the macho American male... Americans are asked to live in a world of complete fantasy which they can never live up to."[1]
Although Altered States was a financial success Russell had difficulty making his next film. One project Beethoven's Secret was about to start shooting when finance fell apart at the last minuute. He was attached to do the film of Evita for over a year, but ultimately left the project when he refused to cast Elaine Paige in the lead.A biopic of Maria Callas with Sophia Loren also failed to get finance. However Russell found himself artistically rejuvenated when offered the chance to direct some opera. He did The Rake's Progress, Soldiers and Butterfly. Eventually he got finance for Crimes of Passion which started filming in April 1984.[3]
"It's a marvelous role," said Perkins, "unlike anything I've ever done."[4]
The film was shot at Zoetrope Studios with a mostly non union crew.[1]
Rock musician Rick Wakeman performed the synthesizer-heavy score, the majority of which is made up of melodies directly lifted from Czech composer Antonín Dvořák's "New World Symphony".
Wakeman has an uncredited role in the film as a wedding photographer.
Perkins loved working with Russell. "You spend so much of your career working with directors who just don't want to bother listening to your ideas. It's wonderful to find a man like Ken who not only listens but actively encourages you to come up with your thoughts." [4]
Turner also enjoyed the experience. She says she felt "really good" about the film "because I feel that was really brave, and I was risking a lot there - in an acting sense. I was satisfied with that. I think that's some of my best work. I don't think the film is as good as it could have been, but I'm very proud of my work in it. Ken made me brave. Ken Russell. And my agent was encouraging. Plus I was feeling a little rebellious around that time. I saw public popularity as a kind of entrapment, and I wanted some danger. I didn't want to get trapped in fulfilling people's conceptions of me over and over again. I felt pressure and I wanted to break out. "[5]
At the film's wrap party aboard the Queen Mary on Long Beach, Russell married his long time companion, Vivian Jolly. The ceremony was officiated by Anthony Perkins, who was an ordained minister with the Universal Life Church.[6] Perkins said Russell was the one who suggested it. "I thought he was kidding," said Perkins. "But then it turned out he'd done some research and discovered that if we paid $25 I could become a member of the Universal Life Church and would be eligible to marry them. Now, as long as I pay $25 a year, I can keep on performing weddings. And I want to. I had such a good time with the last."[7]
"It's an extraordinary film," said Perkins. "And it will jolt people. Even now that it's trimmed, I expect it will offend some people. Ken Russell's films usually do. But it's adventurous filmmaking of the best kind. And that's what people want, isn't it? Too often recently, delicate subjects have been tackled so timidly that they've found no audience at all. I'm glad it's turned out to be controversial. People will either love it or hate it. And that's what you need if you want people to come and see your film today. Even raves from the critics no longer guarantee you an audience. A film has to be talked about. And this one will be."Cite error: A <ref> tag is missing the closing </ref> (see the help page).
Sander said "In the purest sense, it's justified - you can do anything you want to in your movie, as long as you're willing to go with an X rating. Then you have to face the fact that no distributor wants an X. Or that you won't be able to get advertising in many newspapers. Or that you won't be able to get air time on most TV and radio stations. Some time in the last 10 years, an X rating became an automatic stamp of pornography."[8] Sandler says that as a "minor" studio, New World were not willing to take the risk of an advertising backlash.[9]
Russell added to do further cuts "would do the film I was commissioned to do irreparable harm. The only thing one can do is make a stand and avoid being steamrolled. Even if you're squashed flat, it's better than conning the public with something you don't believe in."[10]
[Robert Rehme]] head of New World admitted further cuts "probably would hurt the picture" but felt it would not affect its box office fortunes.[10] Once Russell heard the changes New World were going to make regardless, he agreed to make further cuts and the film got an R.[11]
Sander said "We kept cutting a little more each time and, by the fifth round of cuts, I think they were all so beaten down from looking at the thing and from pressure from the press and elsewhere that they finally went with an R."[9]
Russell said the cuts he did were of "a sex shadow show on a wall and a rather climactic scene of sado- masochistic bent, also a scene where China Blue cracks, and several scenes of erotic art that are her mental reacttions to what's happening to her. I would think the film in its present form loses some of the motivations. Some of what China Blue does must now seem arbitrary."[2]
One scene that was cut in its entirety was one where Kathleen Turner takes a cop home and they get involved with a nightstick. Sandler says when they previewed the film "people were intensely upset by that scene... It was clear that, had we kept it in, it would have made a lot of people extremely uncomfortable." [9]
Brian De Palma said he though the film "was affected deeply by the cuts that were made in it. You're dealing with a major film artist here. You're not dealing with some guy shooting pornography in a back room somewhere."[12]
Reception
Critical
As of July 2018, Crimes of Passion holds a rating of 36% on Rotten Tomatoes based on 11 reviews.[13]
The New York Times said "Ken Russell's films have never lacked exuberance or humor, which makes the flat, joyless tone of Crimes of Passion a surprise. Much of this is attributable to a screenplay... filled with smutty double-entendres and weighty ironies. Only intermittently does Mr. Russell break through with the kind of manic flamboyance that is so singularly and rudely his own."[14]
Perkins later said "there are great moments in that film that could only come from a genius. He was on to something about the nature of religion and evil that few people could ever find. Yet, it was, in the end, a bit of a disappointment because it had no plot. . . no story. The images were great, but there was nothing to hang them on." [15]
Box Office
The film was a minor success in theatres. However it was a big hit on video, making over $4 million. " Films in the home must be the desirable, inevitable end," said Russell. "It's much nicer to watch by a log fire, with a glass of wine and maybe a bird (girl) on your knee. I cannot wait for the cinema to die. The small screen is just fine. In the cinema, your films emerge as big, out of focus blobs with grain all across them, he said.[16]
Lawsuit
In 1986 Russell went to court against New World seeking more than $1 million in damages. He said he had an agreement to direct the film for $578,514 and 20 per cent of the profits. He was paid paid $68,514 during the production and for the company to retain $500,000 as Russell's investment in the picture. [17]
.jpg)
