Thu 2 Feb 2012
A Movie Review by Dan Stumpf: THE NAKED KISS (1964).
Posted by Steve under Crime Films , Reviews[4] Comments
THE NAKED KISS. Allied Artists, 1964. Constance Towers, Anthony Eisley, Michael Dante, Virginia Grey, Patsy Kelly, Marie Devereux, Karen Conrad. Screenwriter/director: Sam Fuller.
The Naked Kiss is every bit as cheap as Murder by Contract [reviewed here ], but more passionate and brilliant by far. Sam Fuller, the writer/producer/director of this thing, is often described as a primitive Genius — sort of a filmmaker savant — but I have always been impressed by his sophistication; Fuller had an uncanny ability to mix metaphors and genres almost at will without ever putting a foot wrong, that seems anything but Primitive.
The Naked Kiss starts off like a mid-60s Porno Film, with a hooker beating her pimp (make that ex-pimp) nearly to death, and ends up with a soapy, sentimental scene that looks to have been lifted from Peyton Place.
Along the way, it provides some of the bluntest and most disturbing imagery you can encounter in the movies, juxtaposing crippled children, Beethoven, crooked cops, Goethe, prostitution and… well, not Redemption but Self-Respect.
This one is photographed by Stanley Cortez, the very best Cheap Photographer in Hollywood, whose credits include The Magnificent Ambersons, Shock Corridor, Night of the Hunter, Abbott and Costello Meet Captain Kidd, and They Saved Hitler’s Brain. Fuller and Cortez were kindred spirits, it seems, and together they turned out a film consistently fascinating to watch as well as to look at.
Equally remarkable is Constance Towers’ performance as Kelly, the reformed hooker whose efforts to find a place in society initiate the plot. Her face, lovingly framed by Fuller and photographed by Cortez, is one of those miracles that sometimes occur in very good movies: Strong, smooth, intelligent features around the coldest, saddest eyes this side of Marley’s Ghost.
With a look like that, Towers doesn’t even need a script, much less any acting ability, but the fact that she is here given a role worthy of her talents makes it all the better.
Fuller’s script is as goofy as ever, a rapid-fire panoply of lines that read more like ultimatums than dialogue, but he and Towers somehow make it all seem extraordinarily Not Dumb.
Only Fuller could get away with having a hooker who quotes Goethe but mispronounces the name, or showing her vanquished pimp falling on a calendar marked at July 4th (Independence Day, get it?) without seeming unbearably pretentious. Perhaps it’s because he has something to be pretentious about.

February 2nd, 2012 at 7:33 pm
I just looked that up on the net- Stanley Cortez was cameraman of THE Night of the Hunter, Charles Laughton’s only directing work, and one of the most haunting films I ever saw.
Robert Mitchum, for all the great parts he played, will always be credited for his role as the ‘priest’ in this movie.
At its time, the film was underrated and flopped, but is an absolute classic nowadays.
The Doc
February 3rd, 2012 at 12:14 pm
THE NAKED KISS has been around on DVD for a while, but the definitive version to get is the most recent one from Criterion. (I don’t have it, yet.)
I was browsing around at Amazon earlier this week, and I happened to come across it there. The people who left comments are all over the place in terms of their opinions. Even more interesting are those who’ve left comments on the comments!
In any case, what convinced me that I should obtain the Criterion DVD is that it contains a long interview with Constance Towers and some documentary features on Sam Fuller, whom I don’t know nearly enough about.
February 4th, 2012 at 10:58 am
Brilliant movie. I recently watched another odd Fuller movie THE CRIMSON KIMONO (1959) which addresses Asian race relations in California and bigotry in a pair of cops, one white, one Asian. A very young James Shigeta, who would go on to play many supporting roles in several TV crime dramas throughout the 60s and 70s, plays the Asian cop. Glenn Corbett is his partner. Completely engrossing and unusual film from Fuller. All of Fuller’s films are worth watching. SHOCK CORRIDOR is another excellent one about a reporter who goes undercover in a mental hospital to get the dirt on the treatment of the patients while trying to solve a murder of one of them. Towers is in that one, too.
February 4th, 2012 at 11:57 am
For anyone interested in obtaining Fuller’s films on DVD, besides getting them one by one, there are two good box sets available. The first is
The Samuel Fuller Film Collection (It Happened in Hollywood / Adventure in Sahara / Power of the Press / The Crimson Kimono / Shockproof / Scandal Sheet / Underworld U.S.A.)
and the second is
Eclipse Series 5: The First Films of Samuel Fuller (The Baron of Arizona / I Shot Jesse James / The Steel Helmet) (The Criterion Collection)
I have the first, but I just now learned about the second while I was trying to find an online listing of the movies that are in the first.