Writer-director Samuel Fuller was known for squeezing raw drama out of pulp material, and that’s certainly the case here. The film follows the travails of Kelly (Constance Towers), a hard-bitten hooker who tries to start a new, legitimate life in a small town. Second chances, though, don’t come easy – especially in prudish, hypocritical suburbia. Fuller tells his story in wild, melodramatic flourishes that could be termed overkill if they weren’t so entertaining – and framed in such striking, black-and-white imagery. The hysterical Towers slaps three different people, and that’s not counting her brutal beating of her pimp before the opening credits. In many ways, The Naked Kiss plays like an extroverted version of the Douglas Sirk melodramas of the same era – movies such as All That Heaven Allows and Imitation of Life – in which the repressed emotions bubble just beneath the surface. Repression is exactly what Fuller disdains. He prefers to lay everything bare.
