THE NAKED KISS

USA |1964 | B&W | DCP | 90’ | ENGLISH

A prostitute tries to change her ways, but the small American town, its authorities (and men) won't let her. She will respond. Samuel Fuller was never a "good boy", but when he went independent he really exploded. And everyone must have felt it, as the film, even from the typically “disreputable” b circuit, beams ahead of its time by telling it like it is. You see, prostitution, abuse, abortion were absent even from the Kennedy-era agenda, just as the complete subversion of women, here almost unprecedentedly empowered. Trashy, camp, constantly aggressive and provocative, here is the cinema Hollywood would understand years later. And David Lynch was taking notes. 

DIRECTOR: Samuel Fuller
SCREENWRITER: Samuel Fuller
DoP: Stanley Cortez
MUSIC: Paul Dunlap
EDITOR: Jerome Thoms
PRINCIPAL CAST: Contance Towers, Anthony Eisley, Michael Dante, Virginia Grey

SAMUEL FULLER
American filmmaker. He started out in journalism, wrote pulp novels, fought in WW2, before moving into movie directing|screenwriting, sometimes for a studio and sometimes independently. Legendary for his acrid character, the sass and straightforward writing, as well as a wild bunch of historical, iconoclastic works that influenced world cinema.

FILMOGRAPHY (SELECTED)
1982 White Dog
1980 The Big Red One
1964 The Naked Kiss
1963 Shock Corridor
1957 Forty Guns
1953 Pickup on South Street