"EMOTIONAL VIOLENCE!" shrieks the trailer to Samuel Fuller's 1964 B-movie extravaganza "The Naked Kiss," and you'll believe that claim eventually even though it initially causes a snicker. Fuller, arguably more than any other American director of the time, helped push Hollywood far beyond the staid, cookie cutter studio productions of the 1930s, 1940s, 1950s, and early 1960s. Here's a film that is a real envelope pusher, a film that deals with themes that must have absolutely shocked audiences of the 1960s to the core of their being. Heck, "The Naked Kiss" still has the power to shock today, and that's saying something about a black and white film that is now forty years old. Fuller, who had begun challenging film audiences much earlier with such films as "Pickup on South Street" and "Shock Corridor," went on to produce, write, and direct other notable films. Before watching "The Naked Kiss," the only Fuller picture I knew about was his homage to the fighting men of World War II, 1980's "The Big Red One." According to information gleaned during several Internet excursions, the French in particular embraced Fuller even as American audiences forgot about him. The recent DVD explosion is sure to rekindle a love for the man's films on this side of the Atlantic.

We see a good deal of that emotional violence--as well as a dose of physical violence--in the opening scenes of "The Naked Kiss," as an aging yet still attractive harridan named Kelly (Constance Towers) pummels her pimp senseless with a high-heeled shoe. She's striking out on her own, taking a sum of money from her now prostrate boss in order to make her escape. Kelly feels that the years of abuse and degradation have rendered her useless and decrepit, and she hopes a new start will restore a modicum of her youthful zest for life. Two years later, we see our heroine stepping off a bus in Grantville, U.S.A., a place that makes "Leave it to Beaver" look like South Central Los Angeles. This town is so saccharine, so picture perfect in that 1950s Hollywood way that you start to wonder exactly where Fuller is taking us. Not to worry. Kelly immediately runs into police detective Griff (Anthony Eisley), a man who hangs around the bus station all day picking up women like Kelly. We also learn that Griff exploits these women by first luring them into a physical encounter before sending them off to a brothel owner named Candy (Virginia Grey). Kelly knows none of this at the start, but she learns quickly after Griff slips her a twenty for the time they spend together. Our woman is appalled at her lapse, so much so that she swears off the life forever and takes up work as a nurse at a local hospital for disabled children.

Things start looking up for Kelly after she takes her new position at the hospital. The hapless souls in her charge buoy her flagging spirits, making her feel as though she's really contributing something to the world. She also gets the opportunity to help out a few women, Dusty (Karen Conrad) and Buff (Marie Devereux), caught up in similar problems she once faced. But the best aspect of Kelly's transformation from harridan to hospital hero is the attention she receives from Grant (Michael Dante), Grantville's primary philanthropist and a beloved figure around town. This guy heaps praise on Kelly, wooing her with his fancy friends, gifts picked up in foreign lands, and his forgiving nature. Even after Grant learns about Kelly's past, in no small part due to Griff's interference, he still offers to marry her. Things couldn't seem better, right? It's around this point that Fuller drops the cinematic equivalent of a nuclear bomb into the proceedings. Towers's character discovers a shocking secret concerning Grant and the town's children, a secret so devastating that she lashes out at her fiancé and accidentally kills him. Her new life shatters as every enemy, and even every friend, she has comes out of the woodwork to excoriate her. It's only through a few lucky breaks that Kelly clears herself of a murder charge, but she must leave Grantville with her reputation in tatters.

I watched "The Naked Kiss" with my girlfriend, and we had a grand time with Fuller's seedy film. We roared, guffawed, and giggled through roughly the first hour of the film. How could we not? The dialogue is hilarious, those children singing in the hospital will make you howl with pain, and Kelly's hard as nails behavior is a real hoot. You simply must love the scene where she charges into the local brothel in order to batter a squawking and squealing Candy into submission. Go get 'em, Kelly! And that mannequin in her room where she stays after first arriving in Grantville! Oh brother! Yep, "The Naked Kiss" is a real trashy laughfest--until Fuller drops the bomb. When Grant's true nature comes to light, my girlfriend and I quit laughing in a hurry. From this point until the end of the movie, you could have heard a pin drop in my living room. As the credits roll, it becomes abundantly clear that Fuller made a masterpiece. Any film that can change gears so effectively, essentially turning cinematic conventions of the time on their head in the process, deserves our praise.

The Criterion Collection again performs miracles bringing a screen classic to DVD. The picture quality looks amazing for such an old film. Unfortunately, you'll need to pick up Criterion's version of Fuller's "Pickup on South Street" if you want plenty of extras, as the only bonus included here is the EMOTIONAL VIOLENCE! trailer. "The Naked Kiss" is a must see film, and one that will stay with me for some time. I'm grateful to an online friend who really knows cinema for inspiring me to check this marvelous gem out.

Two-thirds of the way through THE NAKED KISS a wardful of pediatric orthopedic patients, wearing pirate hats and leaning on crutches, perform a musical number with the formerly bald ex-prostitute who's now engaged to the richest man in Grantville, after telling him that upon her arrival in town she shared her favors and a bottle of Angel Foam with the town's un-uniformed cop, Griff, who'd she met immediately upon debussing....
Sorry. I'm confusing you. At least I didn't mention the Bon-Bon Girls in the town across the river or the room Kelly rented from the woman with the dressmaker's bust commemorating her departed intended George or...
Right. Anyway, after the musical number things really start to get weird. Cross PEYTON PLACE with a bad-acid trip and you get the idea. Probably good campy fun if you're in the mood.

Fuller gave us a ravishing work. plenty of kinetic energy, without anu pause, directly he engages the viewer, around a prostitute who refuses making that job, and to establish in another land with the illusion of reborn with a new name and profession.
She turns in nurse and works in a hospital. she's very pretty and soon she'll meet a man who ask for her to marry him.
Suddenly she finds out awful who'll give her life a twist of fate.
You are the judge and make your own opinion. But meanwhile her past is known by the little neighborhood and you can imagine what that means.
After inquiring her, she'll be free, but she'll let the town, because it doesn't deserve the efforts made for her.
Fuller established this bitter film just in the middle of the sixties in a world shocked by high tension : Vietnam's war, Kennedy's murder, and the racial issues.
May be this was the main reason why this film was underrated. Too much high point temperature in the social body of USA in that moment. Please notice the films awarded by the Academy in that age, there were elusive pictures, think it Mary Poppins, My fair Lady, Tom Jones , Irma la dulce , for avoid to remind the troubled state of things for that special moment.
However the film has prevailed and thanks to the efforts of Criterion it's possible to appreciatte this cult movie.
Don't miss this one.

doesn't prepare you for the musical number halfway through the picture. Jarring is perhaps the best description. Just roll with it and enjoy the denouement.

This review is for the Criterion Collection edition

In this film a former prostitute who moves to a small town to try and get on with her life. She takes a job as a nurse in a children's hospital. She makes several friends in the town and later finds herself in trouble.

This movie has a very interesting plot and touching end but I don't want to give any spoilers

Criterion only added a theatrical trailer for special features making it kind of dull. The accompanying paper still has the standard essay on the film though.