The Naked Kiss

Black & white, 35 mm
USA, 1964, 90 min
Section: Tribute to Samuel Fuller

About the film

Sam Fuller’s work confirms that being branded a B picture need have nothing to do with artistic quality. A lower budget (often around $200,000 for Fuller’s films), fewer shooting days, and unknown actors can to a certain extent bolster filmmaking freedom and creative independence, especially if a gripping storyteller and ambitious director like Sam Fuller is involved. In his second and last film produced by the duo of Leon Fromkess and Sam Firks, he captures a prostitute named Kelly (Constance Towers) at the moment when she decides to say goodbye to a city that only ever brought her sadness and disappointment. Although desiring a new life, the woman little realizes that even in respectable Grantville she will have to cope with the malice and hypocrisy that drove her out of the anonymous metropolis. Violence, pedophilia, prostitution, small-town morality – The Naked Kiss is no exception when it comes to the topics Fuller pillories in his typical bold fashion. In a prologue that enjoys cult status today, Kelly uses her purse to furiously pummel her drunken pimp in order to force him to cough up her back pay. The camera (once again Stanley Cortez), standing in for the procurer’s POV, transforms the unprepared viewer into the recipient of the desperate woman’s rage, thereby strengthening Fuller’s intended effect.