The Naked Kiss (1964)

Location: Home
Seen Before: No
Rating: 3.5

Samuel Fuller, the notorious cigar-chomping pulp director and ex-journalist, brings murderers, pimps, prostitues, and pedophiles to the front row with The Naked Kiss--pretty racy stuff for American cinema in 1964.

Fuller introduces us to our heroine as she wickedly attacks the camera (substituting for a pimp's POV) with a shoe. It's a raging, bizarre, unsettling scene fueled even further by a romping jazz selection that, perhaps needless to say, locks your attention and doesn't let go. From there, however, the film dips up and down between inspired filmmaking and puzzling, blatantly B-movie tendencies.

These tendencies, however, go a long way. In the hands of a craftsman such as Fuller, who is a good filmmaker, they become fascinating--why were such choices made? It is a reflection of the attitudes and views of the man behind the camera as, after all, he was an autuer.

That leaves The Naked Kiss as an exemplary Fuller film (alongside Pickup on South Street and Shock Corridor) in its mix of style, pulp, lowlifes, eccentrics and a dash of curious, B-movie form.