Others who understand Samuel Fuller's brave, groundbreaking daring genius have written excellent reviews of this highly unusual if technically lacking film that from 1964 explores topics still shocking today. I'm not easily forgiving or surprised, but "The Naked Kiss" manages to overcome its faults (wooden acting, sometimes bludgeoning but perhaps necessary sermonizing)by producing what no other film or film maker that I know of did at the time, maybe still. It is a film about the seamy underside of life and its human actors that tells it like it almost is, as much as it could at the time. Like one alcoholic sharing his story with another, it works because we believe in the sincerity of the storyteller. Forget all the low budget criticism; what studio actor would dare have been associated with a film about prostitutes, abortion, violence and pedophilia, all in the perspective of a prophet revealing the hypocrisy of moral society. The biblical prophets were unpopular in their time, too, and Sam Fuller remains a visionary whose work and voice are and remain absolutely unique.
Review of The Naked Kiss
