Customer Reviews

The Naked Kiss [VHS]

5 star:		(16)
4 star:		(12)
3 star:		(8)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

Produced, written and directed by Samuel Fuller, THE NAKED KISS is a little jewel. Constance Towers, in a " à la Gena Rowlands " role, gives a performance you won't forget easily. A great thanks then to Criterion which allows us to rediscover this wonderful movie.

Samuel Fuller, from his 1940 debut in Hollywood until his last movies in France, deserves to be considered as one of the great american directors of the last fifty years. He mainly visited the western, war movies and film noir genres and gave us such masterpieces as FORTY GUNS, SHOCK CORRIDOR and UNDERWORLD, U.S.A. With no big stars but with a style of its own. Raw, violent and provocative, for the eyes and also for the intellect.

THE NAKED KISS is a movie destined to shock the audience. An emotionally ultra-violent first scene prepares us to a journey through Cinderella Land and the Garden of Evil. Samuel Fuller won't let anybody unharm. The Charming Prince, the Hooker with a heart big as the world, the Cop blasé : everybody will suffer in front of Fuller's camera.

It's the third time I watch THE NAKED KISS, the first time on DVD, and I like it even more now. Its atmosphere is one of the strangest you can find on film. Remember Charles Laughton's NIGHT OF THE HUNTER ? One can feel a bit of this dreamy atmosphere in Fuller's movie. The child song Constance Towers sings with the handicapped children will give you the chill.

Image is great, a few white spots now and then coming from a non-perfect copy. The sound is good but you'll have to turn your volume control. Scene access and theatrical trailer as bonus features.

A DVD for your library.

"EMOTIONAL VIOLENCE!" shrieks the trailer to Samuel Fuller's 1964 B-movie extravaganza "The Naked Kiss," and you'll believe that claim eventually even though it initially causes a snicker. Fuller, arguably more than any other American director of the time, helped push Hollywood far beyond the staid, cookie cutter studio productions of the 1930s, 1940s, 1950s, and early 1960s. Here's a film that is a real envelope pusher, a film that deals with themes that must have absolutely shocked audiences of the 1960s to the core of their being. Heck, "The Naked Kiss" still has the power to shock today, and that's saying something about a black and white film that is now forty years old. Fuller, who had begun challenging film audiences much earlier with such films as "Pickup on South Street" and "Shock Corridor," went on to produce, write, and direct other notable films. Before watching "The Naked Kiss," the only Fuller picture I knew about was his homage to the fighting men of World War II, 1980's "The Big Red One." According to information gleaned during several Internet excursions, the French in particular embraced Fuller even as American audiences forgot about him. The recent DVD explosion is sure to rekindle a love for the man's films on this side of the Atlantic.

We see a good deal of that emotional violence--as well as a dose of physical violence--in the opening scenes of "The Naked Kiss," as an aging yet still attractive harridan named Kelly (Constance Towers) pummels her pimp senseless with a high-heeled shoe. She's striking out on her own, taking a sum of money from her now prostrate boss in order to make her escape. Kelly feels that the years of abuse and degradation have rendered her useless and decrepit, and she hopes a new start will restore a modicum of her youthful zest for life. Two years later, we see our heroine stepping off a bus in Grantville, U.S.A., a place that makes "Leave it to Beaver" look like South Central Los Angeles. This town is so saccharine, so picture perfect in that 1950s Hollywood way that you start to wonder exactly where Fuller is taking us. Not to worry. Kelly immediately runs into police detective Griff (Anthony Eisley), a man who hangs around the bus station all day picking up women like Kelly. We also learn that Griff exploits these women by first luring them into a physical encounter before sending them off to a brothel owner named Candy (Virginia Grey). Kelly knows none of this at the start, but she learns quickly after Griff slips her a twenty for the time they spend together. Our woman is appalled at her lapse, so much so that she swears off the life forever and takes up work as a nurse at a local hospital for disabled children.

Things start looking up for Kelly after she takes her new position at the hospital. The hapless souls in her charge buoy her flagging spirits, making her feel as though she's really contributing something to the world. She also gets the opportunity to help out a few women, Dusty (Karen Conrad) and Buff (Marie Devereux), caught up in similar problems she once faced. But the best aspect of Kelly's transformation from harridan to hospital hero is the attention she receives from Grant (Michael Dante), Grantville's primary philanthropist and a beloved figure around town. This guy heaps praise on Kelly, wooing her with his fancy friends, gifts picked up in foreign lands, and his forgiving nature. Even after Grant learns about Kelly's past, in no small part due to Griff's interference, he still offers to marry her. Things couldn't seem better, right? It's around this point that Fuller drops the cinematic equivalent of a nuclear bomb into the proceedings. Towers's character discovers a shocking secret concerning Grant and the town's children, a secret so devastating that she lashes out at her fiancé and accidentally kills him. Her new life shatters as every enemy, and even every friend, she has comes out of the woodwork to excoriate her. It's only through a few lucky breaks that Kelly clears herself of a murder charge, but she must leave Grantville with her reputation in tatters.

I watched "The Naked Kiss" with my girlfriend, and we had a grand time with Fuller's seedy film. We roared, guffawed, and giggled through roughly the first hour of the film. How could we not? The dialogue is hilarious, those children singing in the hospital will make you howl with pain, and Kelly's hard as nails behavior is a real hoot. You simply must love the scene where she charges into the local brothel in order to batter a squawking and squealing Candy into submission. Go get 'em, Kelly! And that mannequin in her room where she stays after first arriving in Grantville! Oh brother! Yep, "The Naked Kiss" is a real trashy laughfest--until Fuller drops the bomb. When Grant's true nature comes to light, my girlfriend and I quit laughing in a hurry. From this point until the end of the movie, you could have heard a pin drop in my living room. As the credits roll, it becomes abundantly clear that Fuller made a masterpiece. Any film that can change gears so effectively, essentially turning cinematic conventions of the time on their head in the process, deserves our praise.

The Criterion Collection again performs miracles bringing a screen classic to DVD. The picture quality looks amazing for such an old film. Unfortunately, you'll need to pick up Criterion's version of Fuller's "Pickup on South Street" if you want plenty of extras, as the only bonus included here is the EMOTIONAL VIOLENCE! trailer. "The Naked Kiss" is a must see film, and one that will stay with me for some time. I'm grateful to an online friend who really knows cinema for inspiring me to check this marvelous gem out.

I had never seen the film, but had heard about it for a long time. I wanted to see it, but was reluctant to spend the money on the Criterion version without seeing it first. The price of this Miracle edition is so low, I had nothing to lose---even if I buy the Criterion later.

This is a facinating film--- read all the reviews for all the editions. But it IS a low budget production. This Miracle disc, while not being in the same league with Criterion is really pretty watchable. It's no demonstration disc, but it's a way to own a movie you may not want to watch very often.

If you are a serious collector, go for the Criterion. Otherwise, this one is a lot better than one has any right to expect for something that's being sold for a few cents plus shipping.

This is one of the great, cult, Fuller films. Notable for its trashy blend of noir fatalism, stereotypical American settings and characters, and subversive anti establishment amoralism.

However, save yourself $30.00 and buy a used VHS copy of the film, this Criterion edition is an absolutely AWFUL print, and looks to be no better than the cheapest VHS tape in quality.

Criterion continues to push the envelope -- the limit of how much people are willing to pay for what are frequently sub standard prints and transfers of classic films. They have had some wonderful remasters and reissues, and deserve credit for those. But they also won't hesitate to use their name and reputation to hustle poor quality copies.

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.

From the opening shots of a woman beating a man with a high heeled pump, you know this is going to be fun...Costance Towers plays a prostitute who, in an attempt to reform herself and settle down, moves to perfect, small-town suburbia. Of course, after living there for a bit, she realizes what everyone who lives in suburbia already knows: It is no less corrupt and nasty than the streets. I don't have this version of the DVD, but the Criterion Collection edition is superb.

This new VCI anamorphic edition of THE NAKED KISS does feature some new to DVD bonus interviews, BUT the transfer is not good at all! It looks to have been unscaled from a flat widescreen master, and there is major ringing and compression artifacting around words anytime they are on the screen. This transfer is worse than Criterion's, which also needs to be redone. So far the best I've seen this film look is on the UK R2 PAL DVD release, which is unmatted but is properly cropped on a widescreen TV once the full/fill mode is used. It is sharper, brighter and smoother than any US release I've seen.

DON'T BUY THIS DVD IF YOU ARE WANTING A HIGH QUALITY NEW ANAMORPHIC TRANSFER!

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.

"The Naked Kiss" is an insult to anyone who has ever believed in the innocence and purity of small town America and is, frankly, a slap in the face to all dearly held notions of Jeffersonian idealism. And that's not all it gets right. It is also a film of intense bravado and cunning originality. Unlike most studio efforts of the time, Sam Fuller's 1964 film is simply bursting with an energy and edge rarely witnessed in cinema. The film is certainly rough and often crudely wrought, but is so often invigorating and compelling that any slight missteps are easily forgiven. It comes across as a film with a mission, made by people determined to expose and crack the gilded veneer of both American movies and American life. The film was widely banned across America, and why wouldn't it be? It is not only critical but downright insulting. It doesn't appeal to any notions of sentiment to make its point, but instead directly confronts and charges its audience with unflinching determination. And it is this honesty, this aggression, this forthwith condemnation, that makes the film as invigorating and perhaps important to watch now as it was in 1964.

To declare a film oppositional in nature is a slippery slope. It is especially tricky some forty years after its release when it has been so fully consumed and canonized as to even meet certain high priced, special edition `criteria' for greatness. But despite our culture's tendency to castrate opposition through absorption, "The Naked Kiss" is about as good an example of confrontational film as one can find. The story, or an urban prostitute come to settle in rural America, is as bold and challenging a tale as ever before presented in movies. It pulls all punches in telling the story too, throwing out words such as `hooker', `prostitute', and `molestation' with a determination to have them heard and heard loud. Its intent is to rattle a few cages, and rattle it does through this tale of small town corruption and common place perversion. It has also a fight to pick with the timidity of American movies, and makes its point with energetic and truly unique cinematic techniques. The cinematography is bold and creative; using techniques of lighting and focus to draw attention to the film's jagged edge. The editing too is creative enough to be noticeable and just rough enough to be subversive. The film draws attention to itself as a film and corrupts its own claims to realism and it is this rejection of a succinct and realized paradigm that calls our own into question. The film grabs a hold of your attention and proceeds to tell you what's wrong with you and it and the whole damn system. And you can't help but listen.

The film is intentionally shrewd and expertly flawed, but that does not stop the talent that is behind it from shining through. Sam Fuller was a talented and perceptive filmmaker, who, when allowed to run his own show, made films of great energy and nearly unparalleled originality. His sense of story and character is matched only by his inventiveness behind the camera. Take the opening sequence of "The Naked Kiss", where Constance Towers beats a man with a shoe before taking his money and reapplying a wig to her shaven head over the credits. The sequence grabs your attention like few others could, due in part to Towers directly beating the camera, which brings a certain chaos and energy to the scene that sets the tone for the entire film. Notice also certain shots of Towers where the background is not only out of focus but twisted and hazy to an unsettling degree. It is touches like this that bring this story and the intent of the film to full realization. The acting too is unique and skilled, with Towers especially being just succinct enough to be believable and yet odd enough to be dissident.

I could write so much more on this film and still fear that I have not said enough. In a nut shell the film is great, but not in a strictly conventional way. It is great in its willingness to experiment, in its determination to confront, and in its refusal to conform. The film is a grenade, both in its direct opposition to social and cultural mores of the time, and in its more subtle determination to expose its own fabrication. It is not a tidy film, it is not smooth in any way, and you may have the sensation that something is not quite right with it. Pay attention to this though, and consider its implications, and you will find watching "The Naked Kiss" an invigorating and worthwhile experience.

I'm on Day Three of a self-imposed Sam Fuller marathon. I had never heard of him until recently and now I can't stop watching. It's drive-in noir--tasteless, exploitative, compelling, well-photographed, neatly cast, and, for the most part--and with some eye-popping exceptions--astonishingly well-acted for what they are. A couple more of his movies, and I will be able to recognize a Sam Fuller blindfolded.