RIP Ken Russell
Monday, November 28, 2011 at 3:30PM
JA in Kathleen Turner, Ken Russell, RIP, Vanessa Redgrave

JA from MNPP here taking a moment to reflect upon the death of the never-a-dull-moment filmmaker Ken Russell (1927-2011). If you're unfamiliar with Russell's work, oh my god you have to fix that! I listed five of my favorite movies of his earlier today, you can't go wrong with any of them. Well... wrong isn't really the right word. Because they can be very wrong indeed. Sometimes so wrong they're right, but just as often, perhaps more often, so wrong they're just very very wrong.

Whore. Nun. Whore, Nun. Whorenun.

But that's alright! Because in Ken Russell's hands bad taste and good taste... well they got really stoned with each other, painted themselves gold, and headed to the bi-annual insane asylum orgy for nymphs and perverts, and it was hypnotic. In one corner there's Ann-Margret humping a phallic couch cushion while covered in baked beans, in another there's Alan Bates and Oliver Reed sweaty and naked and rolling around on top of each other, in another there's Vanessa Redgrave in a habit with a hump having an orgasmic god experience, and there's Kathleen Turner waving a silver dildo at Anthony Perkins, and on, and on. (It's a very loud room we're imagining, with these people.) There was nobody like him, and there won't ever be again, and movies are a lot less interesting now without him.

What's your favorite Ken Russell movie?

 

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