The Naked Kiss

Some movies build with exposition, deliberately revealing layers of characterization, plot arcs. Others explode on the screen, grab you by the lapels and don't let go. Writer/director Samuel Fuller's 1964 THE NAKED KISS falls firmly in the latter category. How can a film that opens with a drunken pimp getting the living crap beaten out of him by one of his "employees" be otherwise? Especially when the attacker's wig, in the heat of scuffle, falls off to reveal she is bald! Does camp come any more potently? Announce itself any more clearly? Fuller has a favorable reputation among many cineastes for his balls-to-the-wall honesty and deliriously cinematic approach. His works always deal with unconventional protagonists who find themselves in impossibly difficult circumstances, the kind that usually (and often do) spell certain doom. A Samuel Fuller film also provides the viewer with a gaggle of laughs, regardless of subject matter, whether they are intentional or not. Scroll back to my review of Fuller's 1982 WHITE DOG for reference, if you like.

 It's hard to tell with this one, though. The straight faced narrative, the ominous score, the earnest acting all scream early 1960s. It is so far beyond dated as to be a bona-fide artifact. So of course the very ingredients of this film will seem hilarious to contemporary audiences. Even Grade A pics of long ago, classics like EAST OF EDEN and (gasp!) CITIZEN KANE often seem hopelessly melodramatic to our irony saturated selves. One must consider the time period, especially for those born after the fact. Tone may be everything to some, and for those used to the more detached and bemused sensibilities of today, watching an older film becomes tricky in determining its merit. But even by low budget 1964 standards, THE NAKED KISS is pretty lurid and strange. Our heroine, Kelly (Constance Towers, oddly Joan Crawford-like), the one beating up the pimp in the opening scene, drifts to a small town to continue to hawk her wares. After an evening with a very popular local cop named Griff (Anthony Eisley), Kelly suddenly has an epiphany. Done is she with selling her feminine wiles. She wants to be a productive member of society! 

Why, she'll even take a job at the local hospital for handicapped children! She'll play mother hen to some of the troubled women who work there! In her bid for respectability, she'll even accept the marriage proposal of the local tycoon (after whom the entire town is named)! Of course, you just know that Kelly's sordid past will come to roost, and it does, but other factors sabotage her attempts for transformation, namely the underbelly of dirt which lurks beneath the Beaver Cleaverish facade of Grantville.  Sounds like David Lynch may have been inspired for BLUE VELVET, eh? 

Without question.   Speaking of Lynchian, one must also consider the band of impaired kids at Grantville Hospital, who inexplicably always seem to be wearing pirate costumes and singing. The song the kids sing with Kelly (repeated in a few scenes) is one of the most bizarrely disturbing I've seen/heard in a movie. Not since "Teddy Bears' Picnic" in Peter Greenaway's A ZED & TWO NAUGHTS have I laughed so uncomfortably. I mentioned Fuller's reputation. The rawness of his films have earned him decades of respect. This despite the hysterical presentations of films like THE NAKED KISS and SHOCK CORRIDOR. For me, a Fuller film only comes together a while after viewing. While they run, they seem overwrought and frankly silly.

Then you ponder things. The themes and subtext are always probing, nagging at you while you try to go about your day. I enjoyed THE NAKED KISS in a junk entertainment sorta way while watching it. It is filled with exploitation elements: lecherous characters, cheesy one-liners, hilarious close-ups and reaction shots, red herrings. But if you take your brain out of neutral, you will recognize the howls of a tortured artist, manifest in social document and frequently scathing satire. This is what separates a Fuller film from that of a thousand others who only desire to shock and amuse.