Not since Mae West has there been a script so ravenous for the salty line, albeit at a level of wit quite out of sight of that other -- and not out of sight above it. ("I never forget a face, especially when I've sat on it"; "You're the head of your class, or is it the class of your head?" -- that kind of thing.) The script is by Barry Sandler, and the mystery of the thing is how it ever got approved for production. Perhaps only a man of Ken Russell's special vision, or of his insensitivity to the written word, would be able to see beyond a script this bad to the bad movie that could be made from it. Most people would not think it was worth the bother. And even Russell is dragged down to a somewhat lower key, or at least to a lower budget, with only a meager handful of locales, a waxy image, and a tinny soundtrack. His big opportunity here (an opportunity for the future, at any rate, if not for the immediate present) is the music-video facsimile shoehorned into the midst of the action. This has only the most tenuous connection to its surroundings, but it has just enough to rule it out as pure parody. It seems instead to be a blatant Jobs Wanted advertisement in the event some angry New Wave group should be shopping around for a big-name director to handle their next video, and should Nicolas Roeg and Alan Parker be previously tied up. Kathleen Turner, Anthony Perkins. (1984) — Duncan Shepherd
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