Andrew Sarris

“Ken Russell's treatment of this patchwork material is by turns skimpy, austere, stylized, giddy, and lyrical. A great deal of sympathy is generated for the Joanna/China Blue character because of a certain spunkiness in Turner's performance that reminds me of the tough '30s and '40s screen heroines. Russell has generally done nothing if not too much in his forays into the kinks and twists of human behavior, but Turner is never too much in even the most lurid situations. The movie lives and breathes in her presence and gasps and dies in her absence. And though I haven't seen enough to be able to confirm it, I suspect hers is the female performance of the year just past. Far from being degraded in the role, Turner embodies an exhilaratingly free will on high heels and even higher self-confidence, and she has apparently inspired a strange tenderness in Ken Russell's too often overheated directorial style….”

Andrew Sarris
Village Voice
March 18, 1985

[Sarris’s earlier review of Romancing the Stone]:

“Kathleen Turner is the most exciting enchantress to zoom out of Hollywood since Jessica Lange escaped King Kong's clumsy grasp to become Dustin Hoffman's tootsie…. One might say that a star is born when one begins mentally casting her for everything in sight. And so it is for me with Kathleen Turner at this moment in film history.

“…. [S]he radiates grace and strength with both sweet and ironic vibrations. The point is that there is a cutting edge to Turner's talent….”

Village Voice, April ? , 1984