SUBJECTS

Child molesters -- Drama, Man-woman relationships -- United States -- Drama, Nurses -- United States -- Drama, Prostitutes -- United States -- Drama, Women -- United States -- Social conditions -- Drama

The Naked Kiss

Archival 35mm Print

featuring

Constance Towers, Anthony Eisley, Michael Dante, Virginia Grey,

Fuller’s tabloid sensibilities propelled his most florid tale, starring Constance Towers as a prostitute who descends on Anytown, USA, in an effort to go straight (but only after a last trick with the town police chief) and winds up caught in a web of scandal. Marked by one of the most striking openings in cinema, in which a bald Towers is seen beating her pimp senseless with a high-heeled shoe and taking “only what’s coming to her” from the cash in his pocket, The Naked Kiss careens wildly from double entendre–laced melodrama to stirring morality play, Fuller’s sharp dialogue and black humor bridging the impossible gaps between genres. Towers’s Kelly keeps a straight face as she effortlessly goes from hooker to pediatric orthopedist, even as her dark past threatens to consume her and her love affair with the town’s richest man reveals the true meaning of the “naked kiss.”

Peter Conheim
FILM DETAILS 
Screenwriter
  • Samuel Fuller
Cinematographer
  • Stanley Cortez
Print Info
  • B&W
  • 35mm
  • 93 mins
Source
  • UCLA Film & Television Archive
Permission
  • Janus Films
CINEFILES

CineFiles is an online database of BAMPFA's extensive collection of documentation covering world cinema, past and present.

View The Naked Kiss documents  

Samuel Fuller (program note), Institut Valencià de l'Audiovisual i de Cinematografia Ricardo Muñoz Suay, Quim Casas, 2010

Pulp fictions: the films of Samuel Fuller (program note), Cinematheque Ontario/a division of Toronto International Film Festival Group, James Quandt, 1998

The big wet one (review), San Francisco Bay Guardian, Chuck Stephens, 1998

Un Americain en Normandie: le jour j de Samuel Fuller (press kit), GMT Productions, Noël Simsolo, 1994

The naked kiss (distributor materials), Beta Film GmbH, 1989

The fundamental Sam Fuller (article), L.A. Weekly, Ginger Varney, 1980

The naked kiss (review), L.A. Weekly, 1980

The American cinema (program note), Blake Lucas, 1970

Naked kiss, The (review), Monthly Film Bulletin, Tom Milne, 1970

Naked kiss (article), Edinburgh Film Festival, Peter Wollen, 1969

Displaying 10 of 17 publicly available documents.


View all The Naked Kiss documentation on CineFiles.