What many people may dismiss as an excursion into trashy exploitation, Samuel Fuller’s The Naked Kiss is genuinely authentic and real. The Naked Kiss is the follow-up to his previous film, Shock Corridor (see if you can spot the reference!), and is leagues better. Don’t get me wrong, there is enough tabloid sleaze in The Naked Kiss as well, but it just plays out better.

This film starts off with a BANG of an opening, one that will leave your jaw dropped to the floor and hooked. The content of the film is the big payoff, especially since it was made in 1964 when such topics were considered highly taboo. There are scenes and allusions to prostitution, rape, child molestation, abortion, etc. These provide the story with its subject material, and each is squeezed till every last bit of pulp splashed against the celluloid strip.

The usual Fuller motifs can be found here as well. Once again Fuller alludes to children as a symbol of innocence (he does this a lot, while in other films he sometimes uses animals) and the staple reversal of the character’s mentality is seen here. In Shock Corridor our protagonist went from being overly ambitious to insane, while here Constance Towers changes her life as a prostitute to something more fulfilling. In many film noirs it’s usually a male protagonist getting revenge, but here we have a strong female lead instead, and whenever a man (or woman in the case of Candy) pushes her around she shows them who’s boss. Not only is this a reversal for the character, but for the genre as well.

Ah, Constance Towers. Her acting isn’t necessarily terrible, nor is it good. It’s somewhere in between, but she gets brownie points for being a fox. That is part of the draw-in for me. Fuller is known for making plenty of B-list pictures while he cold have easily done A-list features. This is part of the reason why his name is synonymous with auteur: Fuller was able to write, produce and direct his lower-budgeted films, which does gave him absolute creative control. This is why his films are so appealing to me, and why I plan to continue seeking out his other films.