The Naked Kiss (1964)

Dirty cop, a prostitute and philanthropist millionaire get together in small town - what a nice setting for a cool film noir, or neo noir in this case. Although little far-fetched and occasionally silly 'The Naked Kiss' is much more hard hitting than some big budgeted quality movies trying so hard to be. It all comes from Samuel Fuller's straightforwardness. It is not a subtle movie - masterfully directed (Fuller's cinematic style is too often overlooked), well acted, but the screenplay (and dialogue) is pure pulp material.

Kelly (Constance Towers) is a prostitute who shows up in the small town of Grantville, just one more burg in a long string of quick stops on the run after being chased out of the big city by her former pimp. She engages in a quick tryst with local police chief Griff (Anthony Eisley), who then tells her to stay out of his town and refers her to a cat-house just across the state line.Sam Fuller is like a bigger budget version of Herschel Gordon Lewis. They both love schlock, sleaze and all that, but Fuller just made everything look a bit crisper and cleaner. And he also had a lot less gore. But he does not shy away from controversy, because we have a prostitute teaching handicapped children here. Maybe I am wrong, but this is sort of edgy for 1964... the independent streak really took off in the 70s, so he was way ahead of the curve.

Finally found a way to review this amazing film. I first saw this feature on Cable television as it was making its rounds and eventually came to Turner Classic Movies. People exclaim about the opening sequence to this neo-noir film directed by Sam Fuller, but I find that particular scene not nearly as impressive as Constance Towers' gravitas as a call girl who decides to reform herself. I personally don't think anyone else in that role would have carried quite the impact that Ms. Towers displays throughout the course of the narrative. This was an Oscar worthy performance plain and simple.Others more knowledgeable about Sam Fuller's body of work have made excellent observations and evaluations. Therefore I will not tread there. I will just speak of the associations and ideas that come to me as I think of this film.I remember once dropping our parents off at the Motor City Casino to park our car. There was a man standing at the front entrance with his valet and waiting for his Mercedes to cruise into sight before him. He looked prosperous and distinguished. Less than ten or fifteen feet away was another man wearing a long coat the same as our successful man of means. The two could have been brothers. The only difference was that the latter was rooting through a garbage receptacle for cans and anything else he could pick free from the garbage.The thing that struck me was how you could have made the two men switch places and each would have seemed perfectly suited to their roles in life and that space. Measuring them with your intuition and sixth sense, you could not help but gauge that each man was possessed of more or less the same native intelligence and potential.Therefore, the question that caught me curiously by the coat-tails was this; why was it that the one was waiting on his Mercedes and the other was scrounging around through garbage for whatever he could find?At work there is an older woman there who services the vehicles that come to the pumps from the Return Canopy after being rented to out of towners. She strikes you as a woman of strong character and resembles Barbara Bush. Sometimes I jokingly call her Martha Washington. Once again, were she to switch places with Barbara Bush I don't think she would miss a beat. It is just a sense that you get about her.There is something like that going on in this film, THE NAKED KISS.Constance Towers plays a high priced call girl, but she comes across as a woman who was destined for more and somehow through circumstances and bad choices wound up not fulfilling her true potential. Whenever she strikes someone in a conflict in the film she brings a moral weight and force to her blows that is just shy of the wrath of Moses or Christ chasing out the money changers. That's what is fascinating about this film to me. At its center you have a Whore who exerts and exercises more moral authority than any other character in the narrative.This is a novel concept and yet it doesn't seem perverse or farcical, heavy-handed or played for laughs. The character Kelly played by Ms. Towers comes across as everything she appears to be to the strangers of the small town where she makes good her escape. At times the poised socialite, loving nurse and educator, or vengeful mother figure to her young friend, she seems authentic in all these roles. You even come to believe that her career as a call girl has made her a keen observer and judge of human nature!When I think of this film, SHANE comes to mind. Here again is a person attempting to escape the consequences of their past and hoping to reinvent themselves. She helps those in her community more than she is helped and in the end moves on because the moral tenor of the environment is just not up to her standards.I find this a dark brilliant twist to the fairy tales of Cinderella and Sleeping Beauty. I have read that Sam Fuller wanted to put a speech at the end of the film where Kelly tells those in the town what she thinks of them and berates them for their veneer of civility and social propriety. Actually, I would have ended the film somewhat sooner, during her last encounter with J. L. Grant, ably played by Michael Dante, to convey the true tragedy of a golden opportunity that turned out to be the tawdry goods of a community illusion.

Every single scene in this movie is evidence of the very low budget it had. In some of the most dramatic scenes, it seemed almost unrealistic. For example, in one scene, a woman is supposed to be sobbing dramatically after she was slapped, however, her mouth is covered and her emotionless eyes blinking is the only thing that can be seen. The woman does not appear in the least to be showing any emotion, let alone sobbing. The story-line was very odd and jumbled, almost as if they had run out of things to make a movie about and they just threw this film together. I'm not even sure that the actors in this film took it seriously.