Strange, Small & Forgotten Films: The Naked Kiss (1964)

June 9, 2010 in Film | Permalink

Constance Towers is a bewigged beauty who pummels her pimp.

A pulpy film with a stony heart, The Naked Kiss is Samuel Fuller’s loony, melodramatic 1964 look at the hypocrisy of American life, just as the country was about to go through the very real and painful process of peeling off the scab covering its wounds.

The small town of Grantville is visited by an unlikely reformer in the person of beautiful prostitute Kelly (Constance Towers), who decides to go straight after arriving in the burg and quickly bedding police detective Griff (Anthony Eisner). It’s not that the lawman has talked sense into her. Griff’s actually furious when he finds out she’s become an orthopedic nurse’s assistant for disabled children instead of heading where he sent her: to work as a hooker for a friend of his in a neighboring town, a madame named Candy. Even though it seems just about everyone in Grantville has a similarly duplicitous agenda, Kelly develops into a feminist hero, using any means necessary to keep a friend from pouring her life down the drain for quick cash at Candy’s Place, and quietly raising money for the same woman when she becomes pregnant. Kelly’s life is further complicated when she is courted by the town founder’s wealthy scion, J.L. Grant (Michael Dante). You can see the trouble in Grant’s eyes even when he blinks.

As he often did, Fuller rewords tabloid headlines into something of a an odd, shocking protest letter in The Naked Kiss. In the choppy film’s manic opening scene, Kelly batters her drunken pimp with such fury that her wig flies off, revealing her fully shaved head. She’s crazed and exposed, just as all of Grantville will soon be. (Available from Netflix and other outlets.)

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