Critics reviews

As you'd expect from Russell, it's not a subtle affair and the director pulls no punches when it comes to the lurid sex scenes. But it looks terrific (thanks to cameraman Dick Bush) and Turner gives a bravura (and brave) performance as the flawed but sympathetic China Blue that ranks as one of her very best.

Infamous and endlessly provocative... [Crimes of Passion] is an angry, arguably putrid examination of repressed sexual yearnings breaking free from the heteronormative trap of monogamy demanded by the institution of marriage and mandated by religious doctrine.

If Shayne's exaggerated self-loathing epitomizes the extremity of the film's overall style, Crimes of Passion nonetheless explores subtler, more realistic forms of skewed sexual understanding. Particularly incisive is the manner in which Joanna's clients reveal their narcissism.

Crimes Of Passion is perhaps Ken Russell's most effective compromise between coherence and genius... Though it's wildly uneven and in places comes across like straight-to-video schlock, it amply illustrates a filmmaking talent that shook the industry.

An extremely uninhibited satire on American sexual dreams and nightmares... [Crimes of Passion] relies on sheer pace and stylistic bravura, and talks dirty more wittily than anything since Bogart and Bacall. There are lapses, but this is in the main a comedy so black that it recaptures some of the cinema's long-lost power to shock.

Its fashion-designer-by-day-hooker-by-night plotline may seem less of an envelope pusher than it did a decade ago, but in Crimes of Passion Kathleen Turner gives the performance of her life and, dated or not, the film remains almost compulsively watchable.

“Crimes of Passion” is really just an eye-popping, raw black comedy, both blatant and ribald in its vision of sexual dysfunction... Most of it is so uncompromising (and funny, in a slick-sick way), you can forgive the banal love story Russell tosses in to soften the edge.

Russell once again attempts to subvert a sententious screenplay (by Barry Sandler) through an insanely overemphatic style, heavy injections of camp humor, and jolts of sadomasochism. It holds your attention, all right, but Russell’s intentionally self-defeating manner (the film only exists to make fun of itself) seems pretty pointless here.

The film is deeply flawed, and sodden with sexual moralism. But amid Hollywood products pasteurized from demographics and screening groups, the idiosyncratic vision of Ken Russell is a refreshing breath of foul air.

For all their extravagance, Ken Russell's films have never lacked exuberance or humor, which makes the flat, joyless tone of ''Crimes of Passion'' a surprise... Only intermittently does Mr. Russell break through with the kind of manic flamboyance that is so singularly and rudely his own.

One of the silliest movies in a long time... When "Crimes of Passion" is over, what's left? Not much. You know you're in trouble in a sex movie when you spend more time thinking about the parts they left out than the parts they put in.