The 1984 film, Crimes of Passion, tells the story of three people and their adventures on the fringes of society. One is just visiting the fringes. One chooses to work there while living elsewhere. And the other is a viscous demon of repressed sexuality.
Bobby Grady (John Laughlin) has what would appear to be an ideal life. He has a nice house in the suburbs. He appears to have a good job. He has a lovely wife (Annie Potts) and he has friends who all remember what a wild guy Bobby used to be when he was younger. Bobby’s grown up and it appears that he’s matured into a life of comfort. In reality, though, Bobby is frustrated. He worries that he’s become a boring old suburbanite. He and his wife rarely have sex. The commercials on television, all inviting him to dive into the life of middle class ennui, seem to taunt him. In order to help pay the bills, he has a second job as a surveillance expert.
He’s hired to follow Joanna Crane (Kathleen Turner), an employee at a fashion house who is suspected of stealing her employer’s designs and selling them. Joanna is describe to Bobby as being cool, ambitious, and always professional. At work, she always keep her emotions to herself and no one seems to know anything about what she does outside of the office. There’s no real evidence that Joanna is stealing designs. Her employer just suspects her because Joanna always seem to be keeping a secret.
Bobby follows Joanna and he discovers that she’s not stealing designs. Instead, she’s leading a secret life as Chyna Blue, a high-priced prostitute who wears a platinum wig and who tends to talk to like a cynical femme fatale in a film noir. Bobby becomes obsessed with Chyna, following her as she deals with different johns, the majority of whom are middle class and respected members of society. Chyna has the ability to know exactly what the men who come to her are secretly looking for. A cop wants to be humiliated. A dying man needs someone to care about him. And one persistent and sweaty customer is obsessed with saving her.
The Reverend Peter Shayne (Anthony Perkins, in twitchy Psycho mode) hangs out on Sunset Strip and tries to save souls. Those who he can’t save, he kills. He carries the tools of his trade with him, a bible, a sex doll, and a sharpened dildo. After Chyna tells him that she doesn’t want anything to do with him or his money or his religion, Shayne grows increasingly more and more obsessed and unbalanced.
The plot is actually pretty simple and not that much different from what one might find in a straight-to-video neo-noir. What sets Crimes of Passion apart from other films of the genre is the fearless performance of Kathleen Turner and the over-the-top direction of Ken Russell. Never one to shy away from confusing and potentially offending his audience, Russell fills the film with shocking and frequently surreal imagery. Grady’s wife would rather watch insanely crass commercials than have sex with him. (“We just got the cable,” she explains.) When Shayne first approaches Chyna, the scene plays out in black-and-white and at a pace that would seem more appropriate for a screwball comedy than a graphic horror film. When Shayne commits one of his first murders, his victim is temporarily transformed into a blow-up doll. The sex-obsessed dialogue alternates between lines of surprising honesty and moments that are so crudely explicit that it’s clear they were meant to parody what Russell viewed as being America’s puritanical culture.
It’s not a film for everyone, which won’t shock anyone who has ever seen a Ken Russell film. The film works best when it focuses of Kathleen Turner and her performances as Chyna and Joanna. John Laughlin is a bit bland as the film’s male lead but that blandness actually provides some grounding for Russell’s more over-the-top impulses. As for Anthony Perkins, he was reportedly struggling with his own addictions when he appeared in this film and he plays Peter Shayne as being a junkie looking for his next fix. There’s nothing subtle about Perkins’s performance but then again, there’s nothing subtle about Ken Russell’s vision.
Crimes of Passion has some major pacing issues and, for all of Russell’s flamboyance, his visuals here are not as consistently interesting as they were in films like Altered States and The Devils. Still, Crimes of Passion is worth seeing for Kathleen Turner’s performance and as a portrait of life on the fringes. Even a minor Ken Russell film is worth watching at least once.
Through the Shattered Lens 