Kathleen Turner as 'China Blue' in Crimes of Passion By Alamy
The late Josephine Hart may have been surprised to learn that her novel Damage, a best-selling book about the triangular relationship between a politician, his journalistic son, and his son's girlfriend, survived another life. on Netflix. Hart's book is now a sexy erotic thriller retitled Obsession with Richard Armitage from The Hobbit, Indira Varma from Game of Thrones and Charlie Murphy from Happy Valley.
At the very least, it's very timely, given that there is currently a flurry of remakes and «reimaginings» of the sexually charged dramas of the eighties and nineties, including «Fatal Attraction», «The Presumption of Innocence» and the beautiful pleasure of guilt «Cruel Intentions». Given that our strict age is wary of the depiction of sex on screen, one can imagine that much of the offensive content will be removed. But we can guarantee that the strangest and perhaps least erotic thriller in the series will never be remade: Ken Russell's incredibly insane Crimes of Passion.
More than a decade after his death, it seems even more incredible that a dirty-pants-wearing cinematic visionary like Russell could have had a career on the scale of his own, including his Oscar nomination for Best Director for Women in Love. . Having critical and box office success with the still unsettling hallucinatory sci-fi horror Altered States.
The film was Russell's Hollywood debut, and despite the industry's caution with the fickle director, he was in demand for projects that other directors would find too extreme. Therefore, it is not surprising that screenwriter Barry Sandler came up with a project that, in his opinion, would be ideal for the author. “It was a very risky and very bold project,” Sandler said. «And let's face it, you couldn't find a more adventurous and daring director than Ken Russell.»
Sandler rose to fame in the seventies working on Agatha Christie adaptations such as Evil Under the Sun and The Mirror Cracked, but he struggled with the limitations he faced in the industry; openly gay, he wrote Lovemaking, the first mainstream film to deal with the then taboo subject of coming out. He found himself fascinated by this new era of seeming permissiveness, telling Starbust magazine, «People had relationship difficulties, there was a lot of sex and it was very easily available and a lot of people used it as a sort of excuse or defense or justification or some way to avoid intimacy, to avoid relationships.” And so he began work on a script that would draw on the dark side of this uncompromising attitude towards free love.
Over the course of about 40 sketches, he aimed to explore the dual identities of outwardly respectable people with barely hidden dark sides. As the script progressed, he created the character of Joanna, a fashion designer who moonlights as a China Blue prostitute, and the manic, drug-sniffing «Reverend» Peter Shane, who fixates on China as his God-given mission. save her from the situation she's in.
The finished film revolved around the triangular relationship between China Blue, Shane, and the «normcore» character Bobby Grady, played by John Laughlin, who becomes involved with China Blue and becomes drawn into the dark side. paid sex.
It was a bold and explicit tale of sexual obsession, complete with distinctly (and deliberately) non-erotic scenes of sado-masochism and group sex. As Sandler remarked, “We were totally going against the grain with something pretty bold. We had a hard time launching it at first – there were certain filmmakers who were interested in being involved… It was the filmmakers who were intrigued, not the studios.”
Initially, some big names were brought in, including directors John Frankenheimer and John Carpenter, and none other than Cher. But they all thought, Sandler recalled, that it was «too fancy» for any mainstream Hollywood studio to make. (The fact that none of them were involved in sexually suggestive filmmaking couldn't help.) Then the independent production organization Novy Mir, hitherto best known for its low-budget exploitative pictures intended for quick bucks, was looking for something the more respectable.
Kathleen Turner and director Ken Russell on the set of Crimes of Passion Author: Alami
Combining Sandler's script and upbeat attitude, they aimed for greatness and a top-notch director. As the writer recalled, «So they said, 'What do you think if we presented this to Ken?' and I said, «You're kidding, my God, yes!» When I was in film school in the early 1970s, there were a handful of directors that any film student would cut off their hand to film their script — Kubrick and Mike Nichols, Polanski and Russell were at the top — and the idea of pitching my script to Ken Russell , I just latched onto it, and sure enough, it worked.»
When Russell read the script, his first reaction was, «I have to do this movie.» Although he had a difficult experience working on Altered States, not least because he butted furiously with screenwriter Paddy Chayefsky, Russell and Sandler worked together happily from the start; The main change the director suggested was to turn Shane's character from a psychiatrist into a potential evangelical preacher, which gave the film an extra hint of perversion — like it needed it.
The choice of two lead roles was crucial to the film's success or failure. Hiring Anthony Perkins — Norman Bates himself — to play the manic Shane might seem like typecasting. But after his success with Psycho, Perkins struggled to expand his career and resisted being cast in stereotypically crazy roles. However, he was happy to take on the all-consuming role of Shane, which he called «a wonderful role, unlike anything I've ever done.» Sandler noted with admiration that Perkins «was a terrific actor and completely got used to the role …». Of course, it was so.
However, for Joanna or China Blue, hiring the right actress was even more difficult. Perhaps optimistically, Russell and Sandler considered Sigourney Weaver and Jessica Lange for the role. But in the end, their choice fell on Kathleen Turner, who burst onto the screen a few years ago in Lawrence Kasdan's stylish erotic thriller Body Heat. Turner then co-starred with William Hurt, who in turn made his film debut in Altered States, and spoke positively of his experience with the quixotic and demanding Russell.
Anthony Perkins as Reverend. Authors: Alami
Turner, who was destined for mainstream success in the big-budget adventure film Romancing the Stone, was advised by her manager, fiancé, and agent not to take on such a sexy role. The role was thought to be detrimental to her career at a time when she was about to become, in Sandler's words, «America's sweetheart». But Turner was indomitable and thought she was in for an exciting experience.
And so it turned out, although the theme was accompanied by chaos on the set. As she described it years later, «Crimes of Passion» was a very powerful film — I think it's one of my best films. Although the job is not easy. Anthony Perkins… was on God knows what drugs, and Ken was still drinking a lot at the time. So it created difficulties that shouldn't have happened. I walked into Ken's trailer at 6am and was asked if I'd like a glass of wine. No thanks, Ken.
She also wasn't ready to accept the acting method Perkins used, sniffing amyl nitrate before the take: «I played a designer by day, a $50 whore on Hollywood Boulevard by night,» she explained. «Do you think I was going to hang out with the whores on Hollywood Boulevard and find out what the fuck it was?» Such was the inherent frenzy of the production that at one point Perkins wondered what would happen if Shane walked around with a monkey on his shoulder, like the libertine poet Lord Rochester. The next day, Russell brought a monkey and a trainer to the set to surprise the actor, although he was not used in the end.
As always with Russell, his visuals and sound effects were both ostentatious and impressive. He deliberately created a seemingly artificial environment (as he did in The Devils with Derek Jarman's sets) that played off the fake world inhabited by the various characters, with his resident cinematographer Dick Bush skillfully portraying a neon-drenched hell, and production designer Steven . March's deliberately cheap set accentuates the bad taste of it all. And Russell commissioned prog rock musician Rick Wakeman, who also briefly acted as a wedding photographer, to create amazingly whimsical music that consisted of Dvořák's «New World Symphony» reimagined for a mix of synthesizer and saxophone. It was bizarre, inimitable, tasteless and strangely attractive; then very similar to «Crimes of passion».
Kathleen Turner and John Laughlin in Crimes of Passion By Alamy
Unsurprisingly, when the film was completed, it ran into trouble with the American MPAA ratings board for its sexual and violent content: something of an occupational hazard for Russell, who attracted controversy like bees to honey. For all their bravado, New World Pictures did not release the film with its original X rating, which was then associated mostly with pornography, and so Russell was forced to recut it over and over again, removing one of the most brutal scenes in which China Blue raped a police officer with his own baton and caused significant cuts in other places.
The director resisted the cut, which he felt violated the integrity of the film, at one point complaining that the only untouched material concerned Grady's family life: «All we have left is two kids drinking orange juice at breakfast.» He found support from fellow director Brian de Palma, who noted that the film was «deeply influenced by the cuts it made. You are dealing with a major film artist. You're not dealing with some guy filming pornography in a back room somewhere.»
Russell used to joke around on the rating board, copying what William Friedkin did with The Exorcist, adding almost subliminal images of erotic and pornographic art and hoping they would go unnoticed. They are not.
In the end, an exhausted Russell agreed to the edits, which took about 13 minutes and stripped him of much of his consistency. The film was released to both critical and box office indifference, although it became a big hit when it was eventually released on video. Roger Ebert said of it that «a good acting and an interesting idea turned into one of the dumbest films in a long time», although he also called The New World «too cowardly to release with a cross». It was not released in an uncut version in the US until 2002, although the version that was distributed in Europe contained most of the cut footage minus about 25 seconds (now restored).
Kathleen Turner at 'day job' mode in Crimes of Passion Credit: Alamy
Watched today, Crimes of Passion is a strange mix of sleazy, obnoxious, and oddly fascinating. Russell was both the perfect director for the project, bringing his usual visual panache and liveliness, and the worst possible director to control the material. It's clear that those 6am glasses of wine didn't help him focus, though Sandler candidly claimed it made him «better and sharper as the day wore on.»
Perkins later aptly remarked that “there are great moments in this film that could only have been created by a genius. He was into something about the nature of religion and evil that few could find. However, in the end, it was a bit of a disappointment because it didn't have a plot. . . no history. The pictures were great, but there was nothing to hang them on.”
It will never be remade and will remain a cult curiosity, like many of Russell's films. However, compared to sterile achievements like Obsession, this is at least unique. And he will go down in history as one of the most characteristic and bizarre examples of passion for crime ever committed in cinema.
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