Kathleen Turner in Ken Russell’s Crimes of Passion (1984)
What an odd movie this is.
Quick, name a movie where Anthony Perkins is totally loony, hangs around a run-down hotel/motel, talks to himself, peeps through peepholes at naked women, and ends up being killed while in drag wearing a cheap wig.
Maybe I worded the question wrong. Too easy. If you can name a Tony Perkins movie at all, he probably did those things. In addition to Psycho 1 through 37, there’s also Crimes of Passion.
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Such a strange movie. It’s essentially three stories. Kathleen Turner is an uptight workaholic fashion executive who has some kind of psychosexual problem, which she works out through another personality who wanders the streets at night as a $50 hooker. Tony Perkins is some kind of pervert/derelict who claims to be an ex-reverend, and utters sentences combining both ends of his split personality, like “Lord, in thy mercy, yeah and verily, smite these douchebags”. He isn’t sure if he wants to use Turner’s body or save her soul. Finally, John Laughlin plays a suburban boy scout of a husband whose deteriorating marriage drives him into the arms of both parts of Kathleen Turner’s personality. The movie is about the interaction between the three characters.
Each of the three characters has a unique stylistic element. When Turner’s night personality, China Blue, is the focus, the movie uses her characteristic blue and rose pastel lighting, and plays her theme music in the background. Perkins gets harsh reds and yellows, and Onward Christian Soldiers. Laughlin gets natural lighting. So it all seems like some kind of adult version of Peter and the Frigging Wolf. Oh, yeah, there’s the oboe, it must be a cop.
The director tops off all the theme music with a heaping helping of wah-wah mutes to punctuate the humorous incidents, like when Gilligan gets hit in the head with a coconut.
And then there’s the completely unrelated fantasy. Russell liked an unrelated idea and he couldn’t fit it into the movie, so here’s how he did it. Laughlin and his wife are watching TV one night, and they are channel-surfing when this fantasy comes on. Cutlery falls into a swimming pool, and people dive in to get it. Good stuff, eh? I couldn’t figure out any relation of any kind to the rest of the film.
Odd filmmaking, lurid and obsessive, as Ken Russell’s films tend to be. He wanted to make a comedy, and he wanted to make a very serious black drama about the underbelly of society, ala 8mm. And then he figured, why not make them both in the same movie? What a concept.
Despite the fact that I’ve ragged on this movie, it must be the among the most watchable bad movies ever made. You will hit the FF once in a while, but you’ll also watch some parts with fascination. The movie was saved from being another “Lonely Lady” by actors who played everything with their tongues deep in their cheeks. Both Perkins (all the time) and Russell (in her hooker guise) play their parts for ultra high camp, and the movie is very entertaining when China Blue and/or Perkins are on screen. Hiring these two was a masterstroke, because they brought an obvious over-the-top glee to the roles that made the whole thing dotty fun.
To add to the general sense of craziness, they both sang. Turner sang “Onward Christian Soldiers” (poorly), and Perkins sang “Forget Your Troubles, C’mon Get Happy” (surprisingly well).