I have seen "Crimes Of Passion" many times over the years but I think I only just came to understand this movie more fully after watching it in its final edited form again recently. "Crimes Of Passion," for all its (many) flaws, for all its trash and sleaze, for good or ill, is a cinematic work of art that defies convention.
The film is partly the story of a vivacious woman, played by Kathleen Turner, who works in design by day and goes into drag to turns tricks downtown by night. She's pursued by a deranged priest who seems intent on "saving" her, possibly by using perverted sex to kill her. Meanwhile, an "average Joe" family man is tasked with investigating her, and just can't stay away from what turns him on. "Bobby," played by John Laughlin, is involved in a marriage and family that's fizzling and may possibly be the perfect antidote to what ails our confused working girl...if she can survive that is.
What most take away from the film is Ms. Turner's brave, fantastic, uninhibited (mentally as well as physically) performance, the berserk scenes with Anthony Perkins, the neon pinks and blues in the set design, the strange surprise ending and the sardonic tone--with all the sex, violence, the lurid color palette and over-the-top synth score, the plot almost seemed like an afterthought; the movie is like a musical where the sex scenes are the big production numbers.
That being said, what's remarkable is that, along with Spielberg's "Close Encounters" this may have been one of the first films to cause a buzz for being re-edited and successfully re-released later.
The "unrated version" that came out in the 80s was popular, adding an infamous "did Turner really sign on for this?" S+M sequence with a cop, selling the movie as a soft-core porn film. The film seemed trashier (if possible) and less redemptive somehow after watching how far "Joanna Crane" (and Ken Russell, in fact) could descend into violent, sexual excess with such seeming nonchalance.
Flash forward to the 90s and we got "C of P" on laser disc with deleted scenes and audio commentary of Ken Russell being interviewed by Barry Sandler, the screenwriter of the film. Here, we learned that Anthony Perkins' character was not originally a fallen priest, which would have made a profound difference in how the character was perceived. The deleted scenes added another level of explanation to the project somehow. The film already has a number of melodramatic, wooden-acted moments, some that seem straight out of a sad, low-budget TV movie; the deleted scenes presented on the laser disc, including a couples' backyard BBQ and a confrontation between a wife and the woman her husband is seeing behind her back seemed like something you'd find on the Lifetime channel. In fact, these scenes just don't fit at all, at least if you see the film as the Ken Russell phantasmagoria it appeared to be in the original edits in the 80s.
The current home-view version of the film includes more deleted scenes and footage cut into the film that was never in any earlier cuts, at least in the US. None of the new scenes extended the outrageousness of the movie (with the exception of an exceptionally ugly and graphic bit of actual porn footage on a TV monitor), quite the opposite. Taken as a body, if you include all the deleted scenes available (which were surely in the green-lit script?) it would seem that originally the story of the film might have been meant to be played straight, and that the plot was about an average Joe in a crumbling marriage who gets involved with a woman who tricks at night and is pursued by a crazy person.
In the current edit, the "China Blue" scenes that once seemed the raison d'etre of the project comprise a much smaller part of the big picture...it's unlikely (but I have no confirmation) that Mr. Sandler envisioned the garishly-colored, over-sexed diatribe on American sexual mores that Mr. Russell crafted out of the script he had to work with (and Russell had brilliantly done something similar with Chayefsky's "Altered States" just years before). Certainly it's hard to believe anyone but Ms. Turner, directed by Mr. Russell, could have gotten away with the (deliciously) ridiculous action in the "China Blue" scenes. Imagine, for example, someone like "Basic Instinct"-era Sharon Stone playing the part, as directed by Adrian Lynne or something--it just wouldn't work, or be as fun.
And the movie IS fun, or should be, aside from some unfortunate misogyny (no film, EVER, should have the line, "strip...b!tch!" in it). The "final edit" of the film we have now, which may be closer to the intent of the work I suspect Mr. Sandler originally concocted, which exists only when you look at all the deleted scenes and the most recent edit, is still good stuff. It's more realistic, there's a lot more compassion; John Laughlin's trajectory makes more sense, and we find that Annie Potts' best work, and many keys to the "point" of the movie, were left on the cutting room floor to make room for more sex-with-nuns-and-dildos Russell-stuff (but that's not really a complaint). But the original conception of the film may have been a different, less outrageous movie. It seems possible that by editing the film into the shorter cut we saw in the mid-80s we were gifted with another berserk Russellian moving-painting whereas if someone else had directed the movie we might have instead gotten an interesting, but less-than-noteworthy melodrama.
Again, the film is flawed in any form, but its power can't be ignored--the visuals, the editing, the music, Ms. Turner and Mr. Perkins' performances, the unflinching discussion of sexual topics many people even today would run screaming from--all of these things combine to create a piece of film art that shouldn't be left out when discussing the works of Ken Russell specifically, and the place of art films in film history in general.
The film is partly the story of a vivacious woman, played by Kathleen Turner, who works in design by day and goes into drag to turns tricks downtown by night. She's pursued by a deranged priest who seems intent on "saving" her, possibly by using perverted sex to kill her. Meanwhile, an "average Joe" family man is tasked with investigating her, and just can't stay away from what turns him on. "Bobby," played by John Laughlin, is involved in a marriage and family that's fizzling and may possibly be the perfect antidote to what ails our confused working girl...if she can survive that is.
What most take away from the film is Ms. Turner's brave, fantastic, uninhibited (mentally as well as physically) performance, the berserk scenes with Anthony Perkins, the neon pinks and blues in the set design, the strange surprise ending and the sardonic tone--with all the sex, violence, the lurid color palette and over-the-top synth score, the plot almost seemed like an afterthought; the movie is like a musical where the sex scenes are the big production numbers.
That being said, what's remarkable is that, along with Spielberg's "Close Encounters" this may have been one of the first films to cause a buzz for being re-edited and successfully re-released later.
The "unrated version" that came out in the 80s was popular, adding an infamous "did Turner really sign on for this?" S+M sequence with a cop, selling the movie as a soft-core porn film. The film seemed trashier (if possible) and less redemptive somehow after watching how far "Joanna Crane" (and Ken Russell, in fact) could descend into violent, sexual excess with such seeming nonchalance.
Flash forward to the 90s and we got "C of P" on laser disc with deleted scenes and audio commentary of Ken Russell being interviewed by Barry Sandler, the screenwriter of the film. Here, we learned that Anthony Perkins' character was not originally a fallen priest, which would have made a profound difference in how the character was perceived. The deleted scenes added another level of explanation to the project somehow. The film already has a number of melodramatic, wooden-acted moments, some that seem straight out of a sad, low-budget TV movie; the deleted scenes presented on the laser disc, including a couples' backyard BBQ and a confrontation between a wife and the woman her husband is seeing behind her back seemed like something you'd find on the Lifetime channel. In fact, these scenes just don't fit at all, at least if you see the film as the Ken Russell phantasmagoria it appeared to be in the original edits in the 80s.
The current home-view version of the film includes more deleted scenes and footage cut into the film that was never in any earlier cuts, at least in the US. None of the new scenes extended the outrageousness of the movie (with the exception of an exceptionally ugly and graphic bit of actual porn footage on a TV monitor), quite the opposite. Taken as a body, if you include all the deleted scenes available (which were surely in the green-lit script?) it would seem that originally the story of the film might have been meant to be played straight, and that the plot was about an average Joe in a crumbling marriage who gets involved with a woman who tricks at night and is pursued by a crazy person.
In the current edit, the "China Blue" scenes that once seemed the raison d'etre of the project comprise a much smaller part of the big picture...it's unlikely (but I have no confirmation) that Mr. Sandler envisioned the garishly-colored, over-sexed diatribe on American sexual mores that Mr. Russell crafted out of the script he had to work with (and Russell had brilliantly done something similar with Chayefsky's "Altered States" just years before). Certainly it's hard to believe anyone but Ms. Turner, directed by Mr. Russell, could have gotten away with the (deliciously) ridiculous action in the "China Blue" scenes. Imagine, for example, someone like "Basic Instinct"-era Sharon Stone playing the part, as directed by Adrian Lynne or something--it just wouldn't work, or be as fun.
And the movie IS fun, or should be, aside from some unfortunate misogyny (no film, EVER, should have the line, "strip...b!tch!" in it). The "final edit" of the film we have now, which may be closer to the intent of the work I suspect Mr. Sandler originally concocted, which exists only when you look at all the deleted scenes and the most recent edit, is still good stuff. It's more realistic, there's a lot more compassion; John Laughlin's trajectory makes more sense, and we find that Annie Potts' best work, and many keys to the "point" of the movie, were left on the cutting room floor to make room for more sex-with-nuns-and-dildos Russell-stuff (but that's not really a complaint). But the original conception of the film may have been a different, less outrageous movie. It seems possible that by editing the film into the shorter cut we saw in the mid-80s we were gifted with another berserk Russellian moving-painting whereas if someone else had directed the movie we might have instead gotten an interesting, but less-than-noteworthy melodrama.
Again, the film is flawed in any form, but its power can't be ignored--the visuals, the editing, the music, Ms. Turner and Mr. Perkins' performances, the unflinching discussion of sexual topics many people even today would run screaming from--all of these things combine to create a piece of film art that shouldn't be left out when discussing the works of Ken Russell specifically, and the place of art films in film history in general.