User reviews

The Naked Kiss (1964)

Constance Towers is fresh off of Sam Fuller's Shock Corridor the previous year, and she is perfectly adroit at the saint/sinner, prostitute/angel dichotomy at the core of it. This is a crazy movie to take seriously, yet there are so many serious parts to it, not the least of which is child molesting. For a 1964 movie that's daring stuff. Throw in a corrupt lovable cop, sweet children with physical disabilities, tinkly fairy tale music that comes out of nowhere when she is looking at a bedroom to stay in, and some good old female fist fights. Out comes a Fuller masterwork, of sort.

It's flawed enough to make some people run, but edgy enough to glue others to their seats. If the movie industry was looking for ways to break out of the doldrums of the late 1950s and early 1960s (there are some terrible high budget films from these years), it overlooked the breakthroughs coming from the fringes. The directness and everyday nasty material here would be the bedrock of movies in just two or three years, as violence, frank sexual content, and flawed people became the norm.

You may as well admit, too, that the best parts of this movie are terrific, including some hard edged, sharp, black and white photography. The Criterion DVD is as close to great as you can get, even though there is some confusion about the way even this famed company handled the release. The movie was actually shot in 4:3 format, in so called "flat" 35mm shooting (no anamorphic lens used). It was then cropped along the top and bottom to create a wide screen format for theatrical release. The "fullscreen" version is formatted full (and I don't know if any of the fullscreen ones show the whole original "open matte" formatting, or are further cropped from the widescreen cropping). Either way, it was intended to be seen with wide screen composition, so get the Criterion. It's beautiful.

"Pickup on South Street" 1953, an 80-minute film noir gem, is a favorite of mine. Richard Widmark and Thelma Ritter (not just exceptional in romantic comedy supporting Rock Hudson and Doris Day in "Pillow Talk") were the two characters and performances I like best. Filmmaker Sam Fuller's creative writing, directing strength, and (indie) producing savvy continued to shine in "The Naked Kiss" 1964. It is the ultimate pulp fiction: high drama soap, touch of camp and tints of film noir. Beautifully shot in Black and White. Terrific cast with Constance Towers as Kelly, the central power of energy and charm, and undeterred determination; Anthony Eisley as Griff, the gruff, tough cop with a tender heart underneath; and the townsfolk of varying characters, nice and not-so-nice to downright sleazy, crooked ones, male or female, and a number of child performances for that matter. Yet with all this, there is a blossoming healthy, full of goodwill story about handicapped youngsters, being encouraged to stand up and be happy in spite of their weaknesses.

The opening segment (before the title/credits roll) is in itself an emphatic revelation. Kelly truly wants to turn over a new leaf, and she readily shares and helps others without guile. She is no loser. She's our heroine of the story. Tearjerker? Certainly can be. Thriller suspense, too? Definitely. Will she be innocently proclaimed? Will the witness precious be found? We would root for her, our Kelly. She is so 'gung ho' and downright nice to everyone (but she can also stand up tough against the 'bad' ones). Fuller's script runs its own natural course with surprises and satisfying plot twists never lacking.

This may not be for everyone (NFE). But if you can take high drama with wide human emotional range, appreciate energetic 'filmic' storytelling with intrigue, you'll enjoy this movie immensely. A Sam Fuller film doesn't disappoint but deserves applause practically guaranteed. His films are no fuss, straightforward and bold, frank and colorful in dialog, and there's the element of raw sophistication (sounds oxymoron, but life is full of contradictions). "The Naked Kiss" is available on DVD, Criterion Collection, widescreen, 91 minutes (just the right length).

The Naked Kiss opens with a shocking pre-credit sequence, shot partly with cameras harnessed to the actors, in which we see a furious woman beating a man with her handbag. He grabs at her and her wig comes off, revealing that she is totally bald - a prostitute who has been shaved in punishment by the pimp she is now assaulting. Kelly (Constance Towers), the hooker eventually makes her way to Grantville, a small town in New England and after a brief liaison with a law enforcement officer, abandons her bad ways and becomes a nurse in a children's hospital. In due course she becomes engaged to Grant (Michael Dante) a rich and handsome Korean War veteran. Grant, however, has a dark secret of his own... Sam Fuller started his career in newspapers, wrote some pulp novels and screenplays, and then wandered the United States as a tramp on freight trains during the Depression before serving with distinction in the US Army. Starting with I Shot Jesse James (1949) he directed a series of sometimes-controversial films that established him as a cult auteur, especially in Europe. His critical stock remains high today, for instance amongst such modern filmmakers as Quentin Tarantino and Tim Robbins. Perhaps Fuller's quote that "Film is a battleground. Love, hate, violence, action, death... in a word, emotion" is the most famous statement of his creative philosophy. Certainly the assaults come thick and fast in The Naked Kiss, either during the opening scene (where the camera angles suggest that blows are struck directly against the audience's point of view), or the two other attacks by an out of control Kelly on Candy (Virginia Grey) the Madame, or Grant respectively. Finally of course there is the 'battleground' of the legal process in which the heroine finds herself entangled.

The present film was the second of two notorious titles that Fuller made, one after the other in the early 1960s, the other being Shock Corridor. They polarised critics between those who found the results shallow and sensational and those others who discovered in Fuller's increasing disillusionment about American society a welcome, and brave aesthetic. There's no denying Fuller's in-your-face tabloid style has its rough edge, but this is part and parcel of the director's way of 'cinema as scoop' where his films were amongst the first to cover the pressing issues of the day. For instance, Steel Helmet (1950) early on brought the Korean War to the screen. The Naked Kiss goes the whole hog in sensationalism and manages to include abortion, prostitution, police corruption as well as paedophilia, often with the urgency of an on-the-spot report. At the centre of it all is Kelly, the poetry-loving prostitute who, despite her past, is both intelligent and sensitive. "Intellect rarely goes with physical beauty" the self centred Grant smugly actually tells her, "and that makes you a remarkable woman." For Kelly leaving her earlier profession is a matter of self-esteem just as much as it is social duty. When Buff (Marie Devereux) tries to follow her bad example she is forcibly reminded that prostitution is "a social problem, a medical problem, a mental problem" and that she will end up "a despicable failure as a woman."

At times The Naked Kiss plays out like a garish Sirkian drama. Small town America, as displayed in Grantville, is just as full of hypocrisy and repression as anything found in Imitation Of Life (1959) or All That Heaven Allows (1955). The difference here is that the emotions are worn on the sleeve; the ironic reassurance of the German's widescreen colour is replaced by stark journalisms in black and white. Fuller's town is a personal one, where Shock Corridor is on the local cinema's marquee, and where Fuller's own paperback novel The Dark Page is being read by the heroine. This is a feminist noir with a controversial edge. If the result is the occasional miscalculation (such as the sugary song sung by Kelly and the children) then the overall effect can be judged a success. The film's title itself refers to the way one can, ostensibly at least, identify a pervert - by the nature of his or her intimate contact. The Naked Kiss, itself a title reminiscent of some garish dime fiction, is full of such distorted intimacies, much of which ends disappointingly or with violence. Of course 'naked' in one sense is also the way we first see Kelly, bald headed and frenziedly beating her pimp. As critics have observed, there's a characteristic contradiction in many of Fuller's films that antisocial characters perform the most necessary social actions. In Pickup On South Street (1953) for instance, it is the sociopath Skip McCoy who helps bring the communists to book. Here, although some still see the newly reformed Kelly as reprehensible - notably her first, and only, paying customer in Grantville, Captain Griff (Anthony Eisley) - it is she who provides the catalyst for the eventual exposure of Grant's perversions. Although still ostracised at the end of the film, she has performed a valuable, if uncomfortable, service to the community - her lack of sentimentality neatly sidestepping many of the 'whore with the heart of gold' clichés, which the director so despised. Fuller had an almost mystical faith in America's destiny, but sensationally recorded its sins and failings with increased pessimism as his career proceeded. The choice of Kelly as the vehicle for reform in The Naked Kiss is typical of his later films. In fact the present title was something of a watershed for the director. He next made the financially unsuccessful, and far more conventional, Shark! (aka: Maneater, 1969), before he eventually found his feet again in the American cinema in the 1980s.

This noir film dealt openly with topics that generally weren't dealt with at all (e.g., pedophilia) or only peripherally (e.g., prostitution, procuring)in 1964. It is the only film noir I know of in which a woman is the lead. Rather than being an adjunct or adversary to the hero, Kelly carries the film from beginning to end, and the twists and turns of the plot will surprise throughout. What mars it somewhat is some bad acting in the smaller roles.

How fascinating an artist is Samuel Fuller? So fascinating that the responses on IMDb for this film range from "brilliant, devastating masterpiece" to "pulpy, campy fun" to "Ed Wood-like crap." Of course, being Fuller, this film is ALL those things. There are sequences that are amazing as anything. There are moments of just brilliant insight and meaning -- creepy and poignant in their nightmarish beauty. And then there are just plan crappy B movie moments that are unintentionally funny. Bad acting and annoying preachy moralizing. It's a hodgepodge. But it is also a totally unique experience to watch. Noir. Melodrama. Crap. Art. This is pure Fuller! Gotta love it!!!!! A must see for people who love their aesthetics with a kick.

B movies lack money so they have to compensate everywhere else; they take chances and risks and try to patch the holes with creativity. Most of them stink but there are a few true gems and this movie definitely belongs in the jewelry case.

This film is ostensibly about a hooker trying to go straight but it's really about the dark subcultures of our world which feed on the urges "normal" people must deny to maintain civilization.

Mainstream Hollywood loves the shiny parts of those subcultures, the random encounters, sexy young things and "pimps up, hos down" trappings of that darkness. But when it comes to showing the whole of the poisonous ecosystem, the popreligion-fueled evangelistas and their sycophantic bean counters in the MPAA and studio system have no interest in acknowledging, much less depicting, its existence.

The studios are happy to show you the yards of sweaty flesh and the figurative hunt/kill part of the act but the process someone goes through to try and get out of that world? Oh, that's a NC-17 art-house flick starring Jennifer Jason Leigh. The mainstream producers prefer to focus on what they think you want in a drama: achingly beautiful people living in penthouse apartments on a plumber's salary acting out plots lifted from "Search for Tomorrow". But what about real drama, the infinite and often-lost battle that stems from the eternal, fundamental conflict between what we wish and what we are? Save it for Sundance.

This movie is far from perfect but it gets so many points for originality and effort I'm giving it 9/10. It tells a difficult story with a very offbeat lead (a strong woman), a underused setting (I was one of those kids in the orthopedic ward for about a year in the mid-70s and when I saw them performing that odd yet haunting musical number I was really moved) and slightly unusual viewpoint and style (shoe-cam, the use of Beethoven, etc).

Constance Towers strikes the right note of bravery and inner strength without turning into a hard-hittin' miracle woman caricature and Grant strikes just the right note for playing a molester; despicable in action but also showing that basic human need to give and receive love, even in his twisted way. Griff moves the plot along, not the greatest acting chops but he hits the marks and reads the lines.

Definitely worth a rent. Check it out.

I began looking into Sam Fuller after seeing a documentary about him on TV in which Scorsese, Tarantino, and Tim Robbins discussed his films. Scorsese also mentions Fuller in his "Personal Journey" film retrospective, in which he sites "The Naked Kiss" as a major influence. From what I've read, the studios found the material in "The Naked Kiss" to be a tad on the heinous side, and re-edited Fuller's film to the point where he didn't even want his name in the credits. His name is very much in the credits however, for soon after the film opens with a prostitute beating a man unconscious with the heel of her shoe, Fuller is named writer, director, and producer. I suspect that the discomfited staggering between camp, noir, and grotesque melodrama, might be more a result of studio tampering than Fuller's misdirection. It is also difficult to discern just what sort of censorship the studios achieved, for whatever they did was austerely permeated by social taboos the likes of abortion, prostitution, child molestation, and murder. These issues are treated by Fuller in a way that is decisively an ideological digression from noir, despite the film's sporadic use of noir's aesthetic. In noir, women are the enigmatic femme fatales: deceptive, seductive, fatal, and the primary antagonism of all men. It appears to be precisely the opposite in "The Naked Kiss." Fuller's protagonist, Kelly, an ex-hooker, tells a cop that you can always tell when a man is "a pervert" from his "naked kiss." Throughout the film, as Kelly encounters women dealing with abortion, prostitution, and pretty much just general depravity, Fuller shows men reinforcing and furthering their depravity, then condemning it when need be. The character of Griff, the cop, is the essence of this. To Fuller, there is a perversity in the way men treat women in American society, and it is reflected in the title of the film itself.

I just had to comment on this movie to give another view to the only other review that's here for this movie at the time. This movie was made in 1964 and thus should be judged according to its time. I thought the movie was excellent in the fact that it took alot of chances for 1964. It dealt with prostitution and child molestation in a very real way. The cinematography was very good for a picture of its time. The lighting on some of the scenes was absolutely erie and sometimes very emotional. I think in todays world of movie making the art of lighting has been lost or at least severely under developed. This movie is well worth seeing if you can find it.

The Naked Kiss is the most overdrawn. sordid, melodrama I've ever seen. At times I confusedly wondered if it were a parody of the weepies of the 1940s, at other times I wondered if it was an exploitation film full-blown. The Naked Kiss will, for some, be an hilarious caricature of 'girl-gone-wrong' films of the 40's and 50's, but for me personally, it is a film about redemption and human horror. This is the most shocking film from this period I've ever seen. I had little idea what I was getting into when I purchased it. It is a frightening portrait of human nature, with heart-wrenching portrayals of nobility and goodness. As sordid as the subject matter, This is an important and recommendable film. Good wills out. Evil is conquered. I, however, was exhausted by the end. Yikers!

Kelly (Constance Towers) is a prostitute who shows up in the small town of Grantville, just one more burg in a long string of quick stops on the run after being chased out of the big city by her former pimp. She engages in a quick tryst with local police chief Griff (Anthony Eisley), who then tells her to stay out of his town and refers her to a cat-house just across the state line.

Sam Fuller is like a bigger budget version of Herschel Gordon Lewis. They both love schlock, sleaze and all that, but Fuller just made everything look a bit crisper and cleaner. And he also had a lot less gore. But he does not shy away from controversy, because we have a prostitute teaching handicapped children here. Maybe I am wrong, but this is sort of edgy for 1964... the independent streak really took off in the 70s, so he was way ahead of the curve.

Samuel fuller is everything but a conventional director.When he tries his hand at western ,his western does not look like a routine one ("40 guns" and "run of the arrow").When he tackles thriller,he is so ahead of his time he predates "cuckoos's nest" by more than 10 years( "shock corridor").And when he broaches melodrama (the atmosphere of "kiss" is more melodrama than film noir,Cinderella's prince recalling the one in "barefoot contessa"),he tramples on something that was sacred in the fifties: the romantic drama,redemption...

Constance Towers' magnetism is spellbinding.So horrendous were the chances taken by Fuller's screenplay that with any lesser talent (actress and director) the result could have been disastrous.The script seems sometimes desultory but Fuller always lands on his feet. His film is some kind of tapestry of Bayeux which sometimes verges on bad taste but I guess it's part of the game.

The film is ,in turn,a film noir (the prologue and the last scenes) , a romantic drama (Venice) , a musical (and the song in the hospital exerts a certain queer fascination that impels listening which a lilting chorus encourages), a reversal of the eternal clichés (Griff's phone call or the biter bit)of melodramatic blackmail.

In its form "Kiss" has moments of magnificence: Kelly imagines she can cure the disabled children with her marvelous tales and she takes them for a happy running in the garden of the hospital;a symmetrical scene shows the nurse and Grant watching an amateur film on Venice and it really takes them there;The discovery of Grant's terrible secret is treated with very restricted means,and the fiancé's behavior really makes sense ,we are not even surprised.

A guilty pleasure,but that kind of pleasure,I ask for more!

We open this wonderful period piece with a bald headed hooker beating up her pimp and it only gets better. A year later and she's left town to open shop in small town USA. Something changes in her and she goes legit, and just in time, too, because the very next thing she does is meet the richest man in town. The two of them hit it off but, if she has a past he has a doozy. Constance Towers kicks absolute butt in this role as the hooker who mends her ways. She is a child of her times; she has the look of mid 60s down as if it were made for her.

Samuel Fuller could make whacked-out movies like no other, and "The Naked Kiss" was his most whacked out of all.

Constance Towers plays Kelly, a hooker who we see in the film's opening sequence shaved completely bald and beating up her pimp. She takes $75 dollars from him or, as she makes sure to point out to him, "exactly what I've got coming to me," and then proceeds to put on her wig and makeup while seductive music plays and the opening credits roll. From that moment on, we know we're in Fuller-land.

Kelly arrives in the quiet suburban idyll of Grantville, and hooks up with her first and last trick, the town's police captain. After that, she decides to wipe her slate clean, and she becomes a nurse in a children's hospital. But she can't escape her past. When she's accused of killing her fiancée, the town's founder, golden boy and Korean war hero, in a fit of rage after finding him molesting a young girl, Kelly's reliability and reputation is called into question, and her life hangs in the balance.

Along with her pimp, Kelly will pound around on a couple of other people before the film is over -- notably a whore house madame who tries to seduce one of Kelly's co-worker friends into a life of prostitution -- but Kelly is basically a good and decent person who believes in justice stripped of any sentimental or phony pretensions. Her fiancée's status and privilege don't prevent her from seeing the pervert underneath, and her love for the children and her young, naive co-workers is fierce but rough; she'll just as soon slap some sense into someone as she will hug some sense into him. The character of Kelly is a refreshing creation, and both she and Constance Towers, who brings her to life, hold this film together when it otherwise might have been a mess. I think Fuller's weakness was as a writer; parts of "The Naked Kiss" are hampered by ridiculous, overheated dialogue and melodrama of the most maudlin order. But he was such a striking visionary that his films always work on the strength of style alone, and that, coupled with Towers' performance, make "The Naked Kiss" something fascinating to behold.

Fuller was always interested in the outcasts and misfits of society. You can tell he didn't have much use for the civilized mainstream. In "The Naked Kiss," his camera lingers lovingly on the crippled children in shots that intentionally evoke impressions of war veteran hospitals. And Kelly leaves Grantville at the film's end, not because the town shuns her -- on the contrary, once they realize she was telling the truth, she's the new town hero -- but because its hypocrisy disgusts her. The implication is that she'd rather remain an outcast than be accepted by a society that she abhors.

"The Naked Kiss" is crazy, frenzied and trippy. It's deliriously nonsensical yet makes a pointed statement in that unique way that only Samuel Fuller could pull off. Check it out.

Grade: A

I'm not sure how anyone can say that the acting is "good" in this film. Like other Fuller films, the acting and dialogue is sometimes awkward. It's probably partly the script, partly Fuller and partly the actors' abilities (or lack thereof).

This one of of those films that people like to talk about because of the great opening scene and the shocking subject matter - but as far as entertainment, it's certainly lacking. Think about it - all you film snobs out there (myself included) - does this deserve an 8, 9, 10 out of 10? Is it really that good? Of course not.

I recommend reading AMG's review of the film: The Naked Kiss is a truly unique film that isn't easily classified as either "good" or "bad."....uneven acting, cheap sets, and gratuitous footage from the director's own home movies, it also features beautifully glossy cinematography by Stanely Cortez......the best way to appreciate The Naked Kiss is probably to keep in mind how much this independent film went against the grain of Hollywood movies of its time period.

If Sam Fuller is the father of Independent film then this is the point where the history of the Indie film begins. However, unlike most of Fuller's work this is not overtly shocking or wordy. In fact its best sequences are those which have no words. The acting, by mostly B actors is terrific, and the dialogue is well done. It tackled an issue that no film had before, and perhaps has not done so well since. A teriffic work.

I'm sure this must have caused a bit of a stir when it was released. It deals with the crime of child sexual abuse. It has as its central figure a young prostitute who is trying to go straight. She has a natural propensity for children and works with them in a hospital. Her past is always lurking in the shadows as she bobs and weaves through a net of suspicion. Her relationship with a cop is the center and he must constantly be on his guard to do what he must do and yet trust her motives. Enter a man who has designs on her, but who has his own little secret. This movie is pretty good, showing how she must deal with her own perverse upbringing and activity and do the honorable thing wherever possible. I did have some trouble with her rapid transition. It's just a little too pat. She is almost too good to be true. Too easy in some respects. Still, there are good performances and the movie breaks some ground.