General · EdgepediaOctober 3, 20267 min read

Crimes of Passion

Crimes of Passion is a 1984 American erotic thriller directed by Ken Russell, written and produced by Barry Sandler, and starring Kathleen Turner as a fashion designer who leads a double life as a prostitute named China Blue, with Anthony Perkins and John Laughlin in supporting roles. It was Russell's second Hollywood film, produced by New World Pictures for a reported budget of $6 million, and it reached theaters in the United States on 19 October 1984 after a protracted fight with the Motion Picture Association of America over its rating.¹^•²

Key fact	Detail
Release	19 October 1984, wide, in the United States; rated R; theatrical run time 101 minutes¹
Director and writer	Ken Russell (director); Barry Sandler (writer and producer)¹
Principal cast	Kathleen Turner (Joanna Crane / China Blue), Anthony Perkins (Reverend Peter Shayne), John Laughlin (Bobby Grady), Annie Potts (Amy Grady), Bruce Davison (Donny Hopper)¹
Budget and box office	$6 million production budget; $1,103,210 opening weekend at 325 theaters; $2,912,945 total domestic gross¹^•³
Rating battle	First rated X on 7 September 1984 for sexual content; the R rating was granted on the fourth submission according to Daily Variety, or the fifth according to producer Barry Sandler¹
Score	Composed and performed by Rick Wakeman, largely built on melodies from Dvořák's "New World Symphony"; Wakeman also appears uncredited as a wedding photographer⁴
Multiple cuts	R-rated US version about 100–101 minutes; Russell's unrated cut about 106–112 minutes depending on the source version¹^•⁵^•⁴

Spoilers

Plot and characters

The film follows Joanna Crane, a sportswear designer who spends her evenings as China Blue, a prostitute specializing in fetishes. A businessman hires Bobby Grady, an electronics repairman who takes surveillance jobs by night, to spy on Joanna, who is suspected of white-collar crimes; Bobby instead discovers her double life and becomes drawn to her. The third figure is Reverend Peter Shayne, a disturbed preacher obsessed with China Blue who stalks her, and whom BFI describes as wielding a weaponized vibrator.⁶^•²

Russell described the setup as a "sort-of ménage à trois" between the performance-art hooker, a suburban husband, and a drug-crazed priest, and said the script by Barry Sandler was "a great script about America and masks and hypocrisy," a theme consistent with his earlier films such as The Devils and Women in Love. Russell changed the antagonist from a film buff to a television preacher, saying that cranky preachers he saw on American television were "much scarier than any paranoid film buff," and he added the scene in which Perkins sings "Get Happy."⁷

Production

A 28 March 1984 Daily Variety article announced Kathleen Turner and Anthony Perkins as stars of the $6-million production, to be directed by Ken Russell and produced by New World Pictures, with principal photography scheduled to begin on 30 April 1984. New World handled domestic distribution, while Orion Pictures acquired foreign rights. The production was based at the soundstages of Hollywood General Studios in Hollywood, California; the end credits state the film was shot at Hollywood Center Studios.¹

The crew included cinematographer Dick Bush, editor Brian Tagg, and production designer Steve Marsh; Donald P. Borchers co-produced and Larry Thompson served as executive producer.¹^•⁷

Censorship and alternate versions

The rating dispute shaped the film's release more than any other production issue. On 7 September 1984 the MPAA ratings board assigned an X for sexual content. Russell re-edited the film, but the second and third submissions also received the X. New World's chief executive, Robert Rehme, accused the MPAA of applying a tougher standard to independent films than to major studios, and the board's president Richard Heffner maintained that the problem was "innate with the material" and that "no amount of cutting will change it." Russell did not want the film playing in pornography venues but also resisted deeper cuts, saying the result would be a "totally meaningless" picture with "no shape and no form to it." The release date moved from 12 October to 19 October 1984, and the film finally received an R on its fourth submission according to Daily Variety, though Barry Sandler said the R came only on the fifth submission.¹

The versions diverged accordingly. Russell's initial cut of 104 minutes screened at a San Francisco sneak preview on 15 September 1984; changes made afterward added an epilogue with Bobby returning to the group therapy session and re-inserted a scene of China Blue comforting a dying man. A second preview on 29 September 1984 represented Russell's "definitive cut," which still contained X-rated material and was distributed overseas. The domestic version was reduced to 101 minutes for theatrical release, and an explicit scene of China Blue dominating a police officer was removed.¹^•⁸ According to IMDb's alternate-versions record, the unrated director's cut runs 112 minutes 37 seconds against 100 minutes 13 seconds for the R-rated theatrical version, and the film was also cut for British cinema and video releases in 1985; the Australian Roadshow Home Video edition was complete and uncut.⁵ To bypass censorship in the home market, New World released a US VHS labeled "Unrated version" containing Russell's intended theatrical cut, and the Arrow Video release later offered both an unrated cut of 106 minutes and a director's cut of 112 minutes.⁴ The American Cinematheque in Los Angeles screened the uncut version for the first time in the US on 12 and 13 August 1989, in a series on erotic imagery in cinema.¹

Box office and reception

The rating controversy did not translate into ticket sales. The film earned $1,103,210 on opening weekend at 325 theaters and dropped to $416,385 the second weekend on 185 screens, finishing with a domestic gross of $2,912,945 against a $6 million budget.¹^•³ In Spain, where it opened on 29 March 1985 as La pasión de China Blue, it sold 539,065 admissions.⁹

Critical response was divided from the start. Roger Ebert, the Chicago Sun-Times critic and 1975 Pulitzer Prize winner, called it one of the silliest movies in a long time, blaming the rating system's cuts, New World's refusal to release it unrated, and Anthony Perkins's overacting, while crediting a touchingly authentic scene in which Turner is hired by the wife of a dying man.⁸ On Rotten Tomatoes the film holds a 54% Tomatometer from 28 reviews and a 60% audience score, with the critics' consensus noting that Russell and his cast were committed but questioning whether audiences would be persuaded.⁶ Later assessments have been warmer toward the uncut material: BFI calls it a "deliriously excessive" piece of 1980s excess with a staccato synthesizer score by Rick Wakeman, and a 2021 retrospective review judged the uncut form a much more cohesive whole.²^•⁶

Place in Russell's career and the genre

BFI identifies Crimes of Passion as Russell's second Hollywood film, after Altered States.²^•⁴ In a critical guide to British film directors, Andrew Shail and colleagues describe Crimes of Passion (1984) and Whore (1991) as luridly sensationalist exercises in Russell's late career.¹⁰ The film sits in the 1980s wave of erotic thrillers that followed the neo-noir revival of 1981, when Body Heat and a remake of The Postman Always Rings Twice returned noir to the screen with sex as the distinguishing feature of the new cycle, a resurgence film scholar R. Barton Palmer attributes to contraception and abortion access, the replacement of the Production Code by the MPAA ratings system beginning in 1969, and the social changes of the women's liberation movement.¹¹ One retrospective appraisal credits it as a bold attempt to bring eroticism into the mainstream that paved the way for later films such as Blue Velvet.¹²

The film's afterlife includes an unusual distinction: New World Home Video won Best Softcore Release for the uncut version at the 1986 Adult Video News Awards.⁴

References

Initially written Oct 3, 2026 · Reviewed: Oct 3, 2026; Oct 25, 2026 · Edited: Oct 3, 2026; Oct 25, 2026; Nov 1, 2026