“Film is a battleground. Love, hate,
violence, action, death… in a word ‘emotion’.” – Samuel Fuller, writer &
director of The Naked Kiss
A bald prostitute beats her pimp
unconscious with a stiletto shoe. That’s what were given in the opening of The Naked Kiss. When we thing of old films
we naturally have an idea of a sepia toned wholesomeness or watered down action
where a person didn’t bleed after being shot. The bad guys are always bad, the
good guys are dove like icons, and never never
a hint of sexuality or “gasp” fornication. This film smacks that idea in the
nuts
After the pimp smack down, the
protagonist, played by Constance Towers, goes on the road as a traveling prostitute.
Eventually she bumps into a small town sheriff who samples her wares, then
sends her across the river to the whorehouse in another town as his is a “decent
place”. Emotionally at the end of her rope, she decides to quit the life of a
hooker and miraculously lands a job as a nurse in charge of the cripple
children’s ward. I guess they didn’t need accreditation for nurses back then.
Well life turns good for the poor
hooker and she becomes embroiled in the small town society. Stopping a girl
before she starts the life a whore by picking a cat fight with the
across-the-river Madame and so on. He then enters into a relationship with the
town rich boy, who is best friends with the sheriff. After a dream-like courtship
where even Tower’s confession about her hooker can't deter rich boy, the two
decide to marry.
Just before the wedding, she arrives
her fiancé’s mansion, to find him on the
verge of molesting a small girl. As he grinningly tries to persuade her to
marry him, arguing that she too is a deviant, the only one who can understand
him, and that he loves her, Towers kills him by striking him in the head with a
phone receiver. Jailed, and under heavy interrogation, she must convince him
and the town that she is telling the truth about her pervert beau’s death.
An
odd mixture of sappy and fucked up, tone in The
Naked Kiss shifts dramatically from scene to scene. It is inconsistent in
its presentation, as if the film is struggling on what it wants to be. From a
harsh beginning we believe that we are delving into a sweet faux Cinderella
story, only to have that illusion ripped away by a child molestation. I will
say though that the actual scene is rather tastefully done, several people I showed
it to were confused as to what had actually happened.
Mixed in is one of the strangest
musical scenes ever shot. In a sense it is a perfect mirror of the rest of the
film. None of the kids can actually sing or, more accurately, they sing like
untrained kids, badly. When Constance Towers joins, who can sing, the two blend
incongruously together. It reminded me of Cop
Rock, the two elements did not fit, but makes something truly weird.
The Children's Song
When the film is good it is dead on
slap-in-the-face “did they really allow this kind of thing back then” good, but
it does get bogged down in a sappy undertone that Tower’s character descends
into after she decides to give up hooking. The film is then scattered with
stock small town oddball “characters”.
Parts of The Naked Kiss would still be controversial today. I can’t imagine
how people reacted to it back then. The full film is below. Enjoy and Caveat Emptor!
For more on this subject try my book A Fine Romance: Details on Dating a Hooker for 3.99 in paperback or free on Audible Audiobook or 99 cents on kindle
No comments:
Post a Comment