The Naked Kiss - Criterion Collection

The Naked Kiss - Criterion Collection


Starring:Constance Towers, Anthony Eisley, Michael Dante, Virginia Grey, Patsy Kelly, Marie Devereux, Karen Conrad, Linda Francis, Bill Sampson, Sheila Mintz, Patricia Gayle, Jean-Michel Michenaud, George Spell, Christopher Barry, Patty Robinson, Betty Robinson, Brenda Howard, Sally Mills, Edy Williams, Monte Mansfield
Director: Samuel Fuller
Studio: Criterion
Product Type: DVD

Editorial Review:
Amazon.com Review
Until Sam Fuller came along, movies in the 1960s were still bound by Hollywood's self-imposed and often hypocritical rules of discretion. The crimes and misdemeanors of lurid pulp fiction remained on drugstore spin-racks and newsstands, diluted on screen until Fuller, with his cigar-chomping audacity and confrontational style, liberated movies from artificial restraint and kicked them into the meaner, darker, but more honest maturity of the post-Kennedy era. Shock Corridor announced Fuller's brazen agenda a year earlier, but The Naked Kiss is even more astonishing because its trashy, provocative plot dares to find depth and humanity beneath the hardened shells of corrupted souls.

The film begins like no other before it: Kelly (Constance Towers) beats her pimp with a handbag, grabs the cash he owes her, adjusts her telltale wig and makeup, and sets out to begin life anew, free from the shame of prostitution. Two years later she's in Grantville, a typically Rockwellian slice of Americana, working wonders with disabled kids and gaining distance from her miserable past. She's even engaged to the town's most respected citizen, but dark clouds are gathering: a corrupt cop knows Kelly's hidden secrets; a nearby brothel taints the community; and a pedophile is lurking in the shadows. Through it all, Fuller calibrates The Naked Kiss with such precision that sentiment and sordidness can run parallel without colliding, shifting from outrageous vice to shameless tear-jerking with equal facility. With twisted tricks up his sleeve, Fuller can be accused of tabloid tackiness, but that would be missing the point: In Fuller's cruel and ugly world, compassion still finds a way to survive. --Jeff Shannon
Description
The setup is pure pulp: A former prostitute relocates to a buttoned-down suburb, determined to fit into mainstream society. But in the strange, hallucinatory territory of writer/director/producer Sam Fuller, perverse secrets simmer beneath a seemingly wholesome facade. Criterion is proud to present The Naked Kiss in a beautiful widescreen transfer.
The Naked Kiss - Criterion Collection
Average customer rating: 3.5 out of 5 stars
  • truly a great movie
  • What a monstrosity.
  • American Life and Cinema Laid Bare
  • Mecca Lecca Huh??!!
  • One Weird Flick
 The Naked Kiss - Criterion Collection
Starring: Constance Towers , Anthony Eisley , Michael Dante , Virginia Grey , and Patsy Kelly
Director: Samuel Fuller
Manufacturer: Criterion
ProductGroup: DVD
Binding: DVD

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  4. Viridiana - Criterion Collection
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ASIN: 0780021088
Release Date: 1998-08-26

Amazon.com Review

Until Sam Fuller came along, movies in the 1960s were still bound by Hollywood's self-imposed and often hypocritical rules of discretion. The crimes and misdemeanors of lurid pulp fiction remained on drugstore spin-racks and newsstands, diluted on screen until Fuller, with his cigar-chomping audacity and confrontational style, liberated movies from artificial restraint and kicked them into the meaner, darker, but more honest maturity of the post-Kennedy era. Shock Corridor announced Fuller's brazen agenda a year earlier, but The Naked Kiss is even more astonishing because its trashy, provocative plot dares to find depth and humanity beneath the hardened shells of corrupted souls.

The film begins like no other before it: Kelly (Constance Towers) beats her pimp with a handbag, grabs the cash he owes her, adjusts her telltale wig and makeup, and sets out to begin life anew, free from the shame of prostitution. Two years later she's in Grantville, a typically Rockwellian slice of Americana, working wonders with disabled kids and gaining distance from her miserable past. She's even engaged to the town's most respected citizen, but dark clouds are gathering: a corrupt cop knows Kelly's hidden secrets; a nearby brothel taints the community; and a pedophile is lurking in the shadows. Through it all, Fuller calibrates The Naked Kiss with such precision that sentiment and sordidness can run parallel without colliding, shifting from outrageous vice to shameless tear-jerking with equal facility. With twisted tricks up his sleeve, Fuller can be accused of tabloid tackiness, but that would be missing the point: In Fuller's cruel and ugly world, compassion still finds a way to survive. --Jeff Shannon

Description

The setup is pure pulp: A former prostitute relocates to a buttoned-down suburb, determined to fit into mainstream society. But in the strange, hallucinatory territory of writer/director/producer Sam Fuller, perverse secrets simmer beneath a seemingly wholesome facade. Criterion is proud to present The Naked Kiss in a beautiful widescreen transfer.

Customer Reviews:

5 out of 5 stars truly a great movie.......2007-06-29

samuel fuller's 'naked kiss' will take viewers by surprise if they expect a typical 1960's black and white movie.. This movie is anything but typical.. But samuel fuller was not your average film director.. In his great subjective, hallucinatory, and psychoanalytic style - he approaches the story of a reformed prostitute with great melodramatic tenacity.. It is tempting to call such a film a cult picture.. but i think there is so much more to it - i would call it simply an overlooked classic.. The camera positioning and lighting are typical fuller.. he really knew how to tell a story in the most powerful cinematic way- and like shock corridor the movie is truly an indictment of society at the time.. Highly recommended..

3 out of 5 stars What a monstrosity........2007-06-21

As many others have said, The Naked Kiss deserves recognition for erupting onto the screen in a pulp-magazine frenzy. But whoo-boy: the acting is some of the worst I've ever seen, the pacing is sluggish, and its clumsy, brazenly manipulative direction would be offensive it it weren't so laughably bad.



This is not a good film. It is a cultural relic. It's real interest is in how insanely it attempts to make a statement from such a preposterous premise and bargain-basement filmaking. However for some classic lines and sheer audacity it is worth seeing.

5 out of 5 stars American Life and Cinema Laid Bare.......2006-08-31

"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.

3 out of 5 stars Mecca Lecca Huh??!!.......2006-08-30

A Gratin of spastic awkward forced contoversy fisting its way stiffly through its 1950's girdle, Naked Kiss seeks to be a controversial film yet doesn't feel remotely real in any way. Comically sad and stiffly acted, it is the epitome of a 1950's "B" movie (although a "B" may be somewhat kind) it is the vegas lounge singer of movies not purposefully campy or kitsch, it truly tries to get off the ground but has no wings... or legs for that matter yet it nobly pushes forth its best effort and THAT is the stuff of which genres are born.
In many ways, this film is kind of what the transition between the '50's & '60's were about. An awkward attempt to grow up too fast without knowing how. We get to watch the spasmotic growing pains of the "Me generation" pushing farther & faster than they can handle.
Come for the cheese, stay for the quirkyness.

4 out of 5 stars One Weird Flick.......2006-08-12

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.

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