by Moe Zilla

Created on: February 10, 2008

"Crimes of Passion" is a strange 1984 film starring Anthony Perkins and Kathleen Turner. 30-year-old Turner played a prostitute named China Blue, in what was only her fourth film since debuting in "Body Heat." She's on a collision course with creepy Anthony Perkins, who plays a phony street preacher who's one of her clients.

Perkins's reverend is struggling against his desires, giving a street lecture against lustfulness after fleeing an adult theatre (and sniffing amyl nitrate). His visits to China Blue involve sharp and hostile exchanges, and this tension eventually builds to the film's violent and disturbing climax.

But the movie's hero is an unhappily married man who's been watching China Blue. He was originally hired to determine whether she was stealing a fashion designer's secrets, but it soon devolves into ogling, and eventually he also becomes her client. In an improbable plot twist, both characters develop a real romantic interest in each other.

Unfortunately, this movie was more interested in exploring "themes." It wanders from its plot to show China Blue involved in other sexy sessions with a policeman and an elderly man. The policeman, an apparent symbol of order and righteousness, is actually a masochist seeking pain. And the elderly man's wife has requested the session, wanting her husband to feel pleasure one last time before his death. It's implying that the prostitute's role-playing and loveless sexuality contains an element of empowerment. This digression doesn't advance the plot, and its radical message makes the character seem especially improbable.

The film was directed by Ken Russell, who'd directed such visual extravaganzas as "Altered States" and "Tommy." In his last American film, he delivered gorgeous photography, with scenes that were lit to appear sinful yet enticing. But the film almost had a mandate for scandal, and this made the movie feel over-crowded with weird surprises. Perkins' crazy character included solely for purposes of commentary. He delivers a somber speech about the need for morality at one point, suddenly banging out the song "C'mon, Get Happy," and switches from stalker to a man begging for his own murder. At one point Perkins even wears Turner's blonde wig, while she wears his black reverend's cloak.

The happy ending it's approaching would have the unhappily married Grady leaving his wife for the prostitute. Ultimately it's a script with some interesting ideas and intense scenes that lose its way while trying to make its esoteric points. What could've been an exciting movie and a thought-provoking exercise ended up being neither.

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