Crimes of Passion

Slithering through the Criterion Channels erotic thriller collection like a perverse explorer. Kinda stupid to mention how visually wild a Ken Russel movie is but here we are. There's this sex scene thats like the Austin powers shadow gag and the music sounds like a SEGA Genesis game it's amazing.

Not erotic, but satisfyingly crazy (a rarer quality)

I've never seen before such a great manifestation of the opposition between sex based on symbolism and sex based on somatic bodily feelings . Though I want to say, like the movie seems to want, that somatic bodily feelings based sex is much superior, I am not sure it's true anymore.

As with many of Ken Russell's films, the excessiveness will put some people off, but if there was a perfect director to make a film about sex, drenched in 1980s music and aesthetics, Russell is that person, combining high and low culture for a potent effect. It's also a very thoughtful character piece if you get past the razor vibrators and neon lighting.

Sleazy nonsense featuring one of film's worst husbands. Patrick Swayze auditioned but they went with John Laughlin. Now, I am missing the alternate universe version of this film featuring Swayze :(.

In a nutshell: High-quality trash from an eccentric director whose two favorite themes are religion and prostitution, and whose musical preferences are classical and post-punk. It's a nicely oddball movie, despite all its flat jokes, unappealing eroticism, tacky thrills and utterly ridiculous portrayals. Kathleen Turner looks like she's having fun in her preposterous role.

Like Lynch, Ken Russell seems nuts, but he's refreshingly not arthouse opaque. If anything, his lunacy seems to come from a manic commitment to underlining his points w/ smash cuts that veer into self-parody at times. Some of the dialogue in this script is also ambiguously camp (does he WANT to make us laugh?) & the ideas too worshipful of repression theories. Still, fans of the unusual should appreciate this (& Turner is as kinky & hot as you're ever going to see a mainstream actress be).

Brilliant trash, with the acting from the three leads making this film fun in their own different ways -- Turner is confident and dangerous as the hooker who takes her job very seriously, Laughlin as the suave '80s archetype, and Perkins as the batshit conflicted preacher. The film is very much in tune with its time, but it shows a range of tone -- sometimes it can be eccentrically wild and sometimes it can be honed in on its important (specifically Western) themes.

Amusing, but very sleazy . . . and very silly too.

What a weird movie with A.Perkins. Like in Psycho he was really a nutcase and a sick bastard. Great performance of him.

The scenes between Turner and Perkins are top notch but the rest of the movie falls flat.

Kathleen Turner gives a good performance in this film. Unfortunately the script is not good. Some of the characters are too over the top and bizarre at times. There are a number of scenes that just come across as weird. Overall this film is disappointing.

This may be Turner's best, or at least most interesting, performance. It is bold and vulnerable while also being quite funny, at times. The best parts are scenes with her and Perkins, who plays an unhinged (surprising, I know) priest with a knife vibrator. It is Ken Russell so of course its wild. Annie Potts rules.

Ken Russell's therapist must have made a fortune. The only other Russell movie I have seen is The Devils, and I said that movie was "weird but fascinating shit," which I think is accurate to describe this one as well. I didn't find myself LIKING it all that much, but Russell's style is just so bold and urgent that it's difficult to take your eyes off. Like The Devils, the rating is particularly high, but the uniqueness makes it more worth it than that. Perkins is great chewing the scenery.

This was pretty weird and it's really silly that this movie got an X rating. Especially in the 1980s.

"Save me from this big-mouthed cooze with a motor-driven ass!" Scenes of lurid fun juxtaposed with mundane domesticity. Then when we get the raw honesty/redemption of the last half hour, it's riveting. Turner is mostly great, and casting old poof Tony Perkins as the obsessive/psychotic "preacher" was brilliant--he even sings a show tune at the end! All that synthisized/rock Dvorak New World Symphony gets real irritating REAL fast. I was never so happy to hear "Onward, Christian Soldiers".

Here and there it's sprinkled with comforting smirks for the straight audience, but those smirks cover a throat full of shit that stays sealed only for moments. Most of the running time is pure bubbling toxic, oozing dark substance of decaying personality cells, and a character grasping for self.

+5 for David Decoteau's craft services

"...and we fucked happily ever after" amen to that!

Like every other Russell movie it gets caught up in iconic moments, which is a shame indeed. It runs close to be emotionally significant if not for the sharp corners.