Whore

Ken Russell directed Whore, a 1991 film set among the streetwalkers of Los Angeles. Theresa Russell plays Liz, a sex worker who has left her pimp, Blake, and is trying to earn a living on her own. She talks directly to the camera about her trade and its dangers, and much of the film follows a single day in which she dodges Blake, sizes up the men who approach her, and recalls how she arrived at this point. Her only steady ally is Rasta, a homeless street performer played by Antonio Fargas. The script, written by Russell with Deborah Dalton, mixes drama with comedy and adopts a pseudo-documentary manner, so Liz's account of her work alternates with scenes of the brutality she faces from clients and from Blake, played by Benjamin Mouton.

The film was the fifteenth and last of Russell's directing credits listed in chronological order, arriving three years after Salome's Last Dance. It had a wide credited cast of thirty-seven and a crew of seventy-one, and it took about a million dollars worldwide, a modest return for a production from Trimark Pictures. On IMDb the critics' rating stands at 4.9 out of 10 from thirteen reviews, while on TMDB the audience rating is 5.3 out of 10 from 117 votes, so the two groups sit close together, with audiences slightly warmer.