Crimes of Passion is a 1984 American erotic thriller film directed by Ken Russell and starring Kathleen Turner, Anthony Perkins, and John Laughlin.

Bobby Grady is an ordinary middle-class electronics store owner who occasionally moonlights doing surveillance work.

He attends a group therapy session because his wife, Amy, has lost interest in sex and he fears their marriage is in trouble.

Grady is soon approached by the owner of a fashion design house to spy on an employee, Joanna Crane, who is suspected of selling clothing patterns to his competitors.

Grady discovers the accusations are unfounded, but also learns that Joanna is moonlighting as a prostitute under the name China Blue, and shedding her business attire for provocative clothing and a platinum wig.

Following a sexual encounter with her in her China Blue persona, Grady begins seeing her on a regular basis, first professionally, then romantically.

However, their involvement is complicated by his guilt and her intimacy issues—in addition to her clientele of regular patrons and their bizarre sexual fetishes.

Among them is the "Reverend" Peter Shayne, who alternately spends his time delivering soapbox sermons on the street, visiting peep shows while sniffing amyl nitrite, and patronizing prostitutes.

Underscoring Shayne's contradictory nature is the cache of sex toys he carries in a small doctor's bag with his Bible.

She dominates a young policeman in an S&M session, penetrating him with his nightstick, and endures a botched threesome in a limousine.

A session with a dying man whose wife wants China Blue to give him sexual gratification one last time inspires Joanna to reveal her real first name, suggesting for the first time that she is the proverbial "hooker with a heart of gold"---and compelling her to begin facing the truth about herself and her double life.

Shayne grows increasingly psychotic: he carries a sharpened metallic vibrator he nicknames "Superman" and starts stalking Joanna.

He moves into a seedy motel next door to her nighttime place of business and watches her activities through a peephole.

Sensing that he is mentally unhinged, Joanna no longer wishes to see him, but Shayne follows her home to her actual apartment.

He hears shouting from her apartment, breaks down her door and finds someone he assumes is Joanna, cowering in terror, not realizing it is actually Shayne in her China Blue disguise.

I was tapping into what was going on around me during the eighties, it was just at the beginning of the advent of the AIDS crisis… people had difficulties with their relationships, there was a lot of sex going on and it was very easily accessible and a lot of people were using it as kind of an excuse or a defence or a rationale or some way to avoid intimacy, to avoid relationships.

He was attached to do the film of Evita for over a year, but ultimately left the project when he refused to cast Elaine Paige in the lead.

[6] Sandler says Russell "was very reluctant to get involved with another American film after the experience he had with (Paddy) Chayefsky on ‘Altered States'.

They had a new head of production, Jonathan Axelrod who wanted to move the company "into a more sophisticated area" and they agreed to finance in association with Orion Pictures.

"He sort of saw that in him and actually pushed his buttons in that direction because he thought it worked for the character, who was very uncomfortable and uneasy and all that.

[2] Rock musician Rick Wakeman performed the synthesizer-heavy score, the majority of which is made up of melodies directly lifted from Czech composer Antonín Dvořák's "New World Symphony".

And that kind of high-pitched almost surreal interplay fascinated him, dealing with themes of masks and facades, illusions and deceptions, with these two outrageous characters going at each other.

"[7] Turner says she felt "really good" about the film "because I feel that was really brave, and I was risking a lot there – in an acting sense.

"[8] Turner wrote in her memoirs that shooting was made difficult by Perkins' drug problem and Russell's heavy drinking.

[9] At the film's wrap party aboard the Queen Mary on Long Beach, Russell married his longtime companion, Vivian Jolly.

"But then it turned out he'd done some research and discovered that if we paid $25 I could become a member of the Universal Life Church and would be eligible to marry them.

New World Pictures refused to release the film unless it was rated 'R', so Russell was asked to cut it a third time.

"Because we had Ken Russell and Kathleen Turner and Tony in a legitimate film, they thought we could re-legitimise the 'X' rating.

"[5] A scene that was cut in its entirety was one where Turner takes a police officer home and involves the use of a nightstick.

[17] Janet Maslin of The New York Times said "Ken Russell's films have never lacked exuberance or humor, which makes the flat, joyless tone of Crimes of Passion a surprise.