- Actors: Constance Towers, Anthony Eisley, Michael Dante, Virginia Grey, Patsy Kelly
- Directors: Samuel Fuller
- Writers: Samuel Fuller
- Producers: Samuel Fuller, Leon Fromkess, Sam Firks
- Format: Black & White, DVD-Video, Widescreen, NTSC, Import
- Language: English
- Region: All Regions
- Aspect Ratio: 1.85:1
- Number of discs: 1
- MPAA Rating:
- Studio: VCI Entertainment
- Release Date: Aug 28 2007
- Run Time: 90 minutes
- Average Customer Review: 3.6 out of 5 stars See all reviews (17 customer reviews)
- ASIN: B000TAPCCM
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Product Details |
Product Description
From Amazon.com
Until Sam Fuller came along, movies in the 1960s were still bound by Hollywood's self-imposed and often hypocritical rules of discretion. The crimes and misdemeanors of lurid pulp fiction remained on drugstore spin-racks and newsstands, diluted on screen until Fuller, with his cigar-chomping audacity and confrontational style, liberated movies from artificial restraint and kicked them into the meaner, darker, but more honest maturity of the post-Kennedy era. Shock Corridor announced Fuller's brazen agenda a year earlier, but The Naked Kiss is even more astonishing because its trashy, provocative plot dares to find depth and humanity beneath the hardened shells of corrupted souls.
The film begins like no other before it: Kelly (Constance Towers) beats her pimp with a handbag, grabs the cash he owes her, adjusts her telltale wig and makeup, and sets out to begin life anew, free from the shame of prostitution. Two years later she's in Grantville, a typically Rockwellian slice of Americana, working wonders with disabled kids and gaining distance from her miserable past. She's even engaged to the town's most respected citizen, but dark clouds are gathering: a corrupt cop knows Kelly's hidden secrets; a nearby brothel taints the community; and a pedophile is lurking in the shadows. Through it all, Fuller calibrates The Naked Kiss with such precision that sentiment and sordidness can run parallel without colliding, shifting from outrageous vice to shameless tear-jerking with equal facility. With twisted tricks up his sleeve, Fuller can be accused of tabloid tackiness, but that would be missing the point: In Fuller's cruel and ugly world, compassion still finds a way to survive. --Jeff Shannon
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Customer Reviews
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Most helpful customer reviews
2.0 out of 5 stars
So bad its...bad.,
By A Customer
This review is from: The Naked Kiss (Widescreen) (DVD)
Don't get me wrong; I like trash. But this manages to be both very dull and very over the top at the same time. Constance Towers is ok (its no wonder she ended up doing soaps; she has that "almost convincing" way of acting). Anthony Eisley is fair. The movie has some of the absolute worst, terrible, shockingly bad child actors imaginable. The bad acting, fake streets and sets, stereotypical characters and sheer length make this painful. Nothing rings true enough to take it seriously--but how can you laugh at crippled children and child molesters? Its like Roger Corman without the fun. Worth seeing--maybe--but how people can attach such importance to imcompetant schlock.....
5.0 out of 5 stars
DON'T MAKE KELLY MAD.....,
By
This review is from: The Naked Kiss (Widescreen) (DVD)
Sensational 60's b&w shocker from Sam Fuller about a hooker named Kelly who, as we see in the opening, has a nasty temper. Her "tout" shaved her head bald while she was passed out and she beats the hell out of him with her clutch bag! She splits and becomes a traveling hooker. (Well, I guess it beats peddling Mary Kaye.) She winds up in a very small town and her first customer is the local cop. Coming to like the small town life, she rents a room from a sweet old lady who has her own sad story and decides to go straight. But the cop is nervous about having Kelly around so he sends her across the river to a whorehouse run by Candy who takes a liking to her and offers her a job as one of her "Bon-Bons". But Kelly nixes the offer and goes back to the small town and gets a job as a nurse's aide in the crippled children's wing of the local hospital. There she finds what she's been looking for---purpose. Kelly is really a good person. But she has to make one more trip across the river to Candy's. She beats the hell out of Candy (with that trusty clutch bag again) for trying to recruit a down-on-her-luck co-worker at the hospital. She then stuffs the money Candy had given the girl right in Candy's mouth. Then things really begin to happen. A rich guy who's the "pillar" of the community wants to marry her and Kelly thinks she's met her Prince Charming until she catches him molesting a little girl! That nasty temper flares again and she shoots him. Of course this isn't the end but I can't say any more. The serpentine story never stops. The acting is first rate and the cast is perfect for each of their individual roles. Especially Constance Towers as Kelly and Virginia Grey as Candy. The two have memorable confrontations. As Kelly sits in jail for murder, Candy is called in to give a statement. She does. She says to Kelly, "Nobody stuffs dirty money in MY mouth!" This is an engrossing, if somewhat campy, film but well worth the watching. Criterion has done a fine job in the DVD presentation. Check it out and enjoy.
5.0 out of 5 stars
The Full Range of the Human Experience,
By gobirds2 (New England) - See all my reviews
This review is from: The Naked Kiss (Widescreen) (DVD)
THE NAKED KISS opens with such a shocking, lurid and erotic scene of a prostitute violently beating her pimp, seen blow by blow from his point of view, that the viewer is immediately jolted and gripped by these images and is mesmerized. Director, Samuel Fuller hooks you and he doesn't let go. The statuesque Constance Towers is the prostitute named Kelly and eventually she arrives at a new town where she ultimately decides to start a new life that leads to her working with disabled children. Certain aspects of her past experiences lead her to conclusions that are unspeakable about the "normal" society that she has now established herself in. This is truly a remarkable film because director- writer Fuller takes the viewer to avenues of unexpected emotional response both subtle and outlandish touching raw nerves along the way leaving one disconcerted and devastated. The chiaroscuro cinematography by Stanley Cortez shooting the light and dark elements of Constance Towers face and figure within each frame lends to the off beat and sensational visual expression of this torn figure of a woman. Towers and Cortez both complete Fuller's vision of a hard world speckled with fleeting moments of sentimentality and an ever-elusive sentimentality.
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