cult film freak: KEN RUSSELL'S EXPLOITATION NEO NOIR 'CRIMES OF PASSION'

Title: CRIMES OF PASSION Year: 1984 Rating: ***1/2

If Brian De Palma and Paul Schrader had a baby, it'd hang around Ken Russell's CRIMES OF PASSION starring Kathleen Turner as a fashion designer by day, anything-goes hooker by night, crossing paths with sexually-frustrated family man John Laughlin who, in a Neon Neo-Noir fashion, is hired by Turner's daytime boss to trail her nightlife...

Buried lead John Laughlin, more comfortable as a fourth or fifth banana (like the faithfully protective muscle-head in the same years' FOOTLOOSE), tries his very hardest to wield the intensity to learn the taboo trade and, fitfully curious, becomes one of her most loyal (and beloved) customers in sexy/steamy scenes perhaps too intense for casual viewers and not enough for the hardcore crowd...

Anthony Perkins in CRIMES OF PASSION

Meanwhile, on the main peripheral is Anthony Perkins, resembling a dilapidated Muppet and doing an over-the-top impersonation of what people expect of his post-PSYCHO purgatory career...

He's a wacky street preacher out to "save" the whore — only he wants some on the side, and steals what borders on an intentionally bad movie like a criminal cracking his own safe.