I love films where everyone seems to be having a good time, especially the director. Kathy Turner vamps up Madonna, while Tony Perkins parodies his Psycho role while Russell tells us of a hooker whose heart is cold and made of gold at the same time--because her customers love it. Tony's preacher has obviously spent too much time amongst the slime bags of the combat zone and has allowed them to totally push him over the edge. The obvious point of this film is that the "typical" marriage is no better or worse than moral degeneracy

Forget the "R" rated version, and rent the unrated.

Thank God for Ken Russell. No other director could have made this one. This is not one of his best films, but it is certainly a fun one to watch. Kathleen Turner really goes the limit as an actress in her role as China Blue. She looks great and gives more to the film than it really deserves. While there are some serious jabs made at relationships and sexuality --- this movie is really just raunchy fun. Anthony Perkins almost steals the show in a send-up of his "Psycho" performance. Great use of color and set design considering the small budget. Rick Wakeman's score is suitably cheezy and very dated. An adult film worth watching.

Ken Russell, Britain's 'enfant terrible' of cinema, directs this gaudy and extremely sordid tale of sex, perversion and madness in his signature outrageous style, with graphic sex, violence and, of course, religious imagery. Kathleen Turner takes the lead, as fashion designer Joanna Crane by day, and $50 hooker China Blue by night. Two men become obsessed with the woman: discontented married father of two Bobby Grady (John Laughlin), who is hired to find out if Joanna is involved in industrial espionage, and nutty street preacher Peter Shayne (Anthony Perkins), who tries to 'save' fallen women through the use of a razor-sharp metal vibrator.

Turner has long been one of my favourite actresses, ever since I saw her in Romancing the Stone back when I was a teenager. Naturally, I sought out her more adult fare -- Body Heat (1981) and this film -- when they became available on home video, but while I loved Lawrence Kasdan's sultry neo-noir, Russell's more audacious movie left me far less satisfied, despite my love of provocative cinema and a golden opportunity to ogle its sexy star getting seriously nasty. And unimpressed I remain, over 30 years later.

Russell, never one to shy away from controversy, revels in the excess of the film's lurid elements, delivering several raunchy scenes guaranteed to give the censors aneurysms (Kathleen and the truncheon!), but he also weaves a very dull plot thread about Bobby's failing marriage into the craziness, causing the film to drag (this time around I watched the 113 minute director's cut, which features more filth, but also several very boring scenes between Bobby and his wife Amy, played by Annie Potts). Turner is great in her dual role, giving her character depth and complexity the film doesn't deserve, and she looks amazing, but Laughlin makes for a bland protagonist, Potts' character is thoroughly unlikable, and Perkins... well he takes Norman Bates to eleven, his sweaty, twitchy, vibrator-fondling psycho a masterclass in overacting, which is fun for a while, but eventually gets tiresome.

Visually, the film is impressive, with great use of light and shadow, neon colours drenching many of the scenes, and there are quite a few gems of witty dialogue ('Are you free?' 'No, but I'm one hell of a bargain.'), but with all that excruciating marital strife, Russell's tendency to stray into head-scratching avant-garde territory, and the often awkward acting make this one far less entertaining than its sleazy premise implies.

4 out of 10 for the film, bumped up to 5 for Kathleen.