The Naked Kiss

A kind of companion piece—in terms of style and subject matter if not story—to his also newly re-released 1963 film Shock Corridor (VL-3/11), Samuel Fuller's The Naked Kiss (1964) opens with Kelly (Constance Towers) battering the camera point blank before her wig slips off to reveal a startling image. Kelly is a streetwalker who moves into a small community and sleeps with a local cop named Griff (Anthony Eisley), who then tries to force her out of town. Instead, Kelly decides to straighten out her life, eventually becoming a nurse in the children's ward of a hospital, while also being wooed by local millionaire J.L. Grant (Michael Dante), a cool sophisticate with a perverse secret. Fuller displays his typical hard-fisted approach in several scenes, including the jagged opening, where dislocated cutting creates a genuine shock effect. An audacious mix of cynicism, sleaze, sentimentality, and social commentary, The Naked Kiss is a bizarre assault on the senses, depicting a tawdry America hiding its guilt beneath a layer of normalcy. Boasting a fine new transfer on both the DVD and the Blu-ray debut, extras include excerpts from a 1983 episode of The South Bank Show dedicated to Fuller, a pair of archival interviews with Fuller from the French TV series Cinéastes de notre temps, a 2007 interview with Towers, and a booklet with essays and excerpts from Fuller's autobiography. Recommended. (S. Axmaker)