Ken Russell - July 3rd, 1927 to November 27th, 2011

Once in the early 90s I was at a video store with Nick Jorgensen in Noe Valley, San Francisco, looking to pick up a couple of movies. One of them (I forget the other) was Whore, by Ken Russell. When I got to the counter, the guy took the box from my hand and said to me, "Look, you don't want to rent this movie. Please don't rent this movie. Go home, think about it, and if you STILL want to see it, come back another day and I'll let you have it for free, okay?" He seemed like a nice guy, so we put Whore back and picked out something else.

A few years later I was in Michigan and it was 2 for 1 night and so I thought, well, maybe now it's time to see Whore, as it will sort of be "for free". And that is how Whore made my top 3 worst movies I've ever seen list, which also includes, sadly, Nicholas Roeg's "Cold Heaven" and Baby Lynch's "Boxing Helena" (and, yes, there are likely worse movies than these three out there in the world, but these movies were TRYING to be good; I'm sure The Rock starring in The Tooth Fairy is worse than any of these, but a) I obviously didn't see it and b) just based on the trailer a person would be pretty clear about the fact that they were not trying to make a serious movie (but I digress)). However, Whore is NOT how I will remember Ken Russell. How I will remember Ken Russell is -

• Lair of the White Worm - Fantastically silly and campy and scary (based on a lesser known Bram Stoker).
  
• Salome's Last Dance - Just a fine fucking movie.
  
• The Devils - Ditto (and Vanessa Redgrave as the most beautiful nun I have ever seen).
  
• The Music Lover - Richard Chamberlain as Tchaikosky!
  
• Crimes of Passion - Just almost impossible to describe if you haven't seen it, but Kathleen Turner is an architect by day and a prostitute named, as I recall, China Blue by night, and then Tony Perkins shows up with a rather large dildo (kids don't try this at home).
• Women in Love - sure, Alan Bates and Oliver Reed nude wrestling, but so much more too!

At any rate, he made some movies that didn't work for me (Gothic, Tommy) but, in general, you knew if it was Ken Russell he'd thrown himself into the thing completely, hit or miss, and it would almost always have something in it that you'd say to yourself, "Well, haven't seen that before..."

Cheers, Ken...

IBL:mm