HPR

Exploitation as art?

By Christopher P. Jacobs
Staff Writer

Independent filmmaking is typically associated with small budgets and labors of love. Directors often sacrifice the luxury of larger studio finances and longer shooting schedules for the ability to put their own personal visions on film as best they can with the resources they have available. Some may even enjoy the challenge of tighter budgets and shorter deadlines, more concerned with grabbing the audience’s attention and giving them something they’d remember. Such a filmmaker was Samuel Fuller, a former crime reporter who turned to writing stories and screenplays, eventually getting into directing by telling a low-budget producer he’d sell him his script if he could direct it himself at no extra fee.

Never shying away from controversial social issues, writer-producer-director Fuller’s success at turning out profitable films on modest budgets quickly earned him regular work at major studios like Fox, Universal, Columbia, and Warners during the 1950s and early 60s, but by the early 60s the traditional studio system was falling apart. To make the films he wanted he suddenly found himself an independent searching for backers, but he continued making films until 1982 in the U.S., plus a couple more in France during the 1980s. He even acted in a few for other directors.

Fuller, who died in 1997, would have turned 99 or 100 this year (depending on which source you check). Earlier this year Criterion released on Blu-ray two of his most influential films on such current filmmakers as Martin Scorsese, Quentin Tarantino, Jim Jarmusch and Tim Robbins) as well as European directors like Jean-Luc Godard and Wim Wenders.

While dismissed by some as sordid, tabloid-mentality exploitation films, “Shock Corridor” (1963) and “The Naked Kiss” (1964) are considered by many critics among Fuller’s best and most personal work, possibly second only to his Oscar-nominated crime-spy thriller “Pickup on South Street” (1953). And even those who appreciate both films often diverge on whether “Shock Corridor” or “The Naked Kiss” is a superior, artistic film or merely an interesting exercise in the director’s typical subject material. Both are rough-edged stories that treat topics rarely handled by mainstream Hollywood productions, and both are expertly photographed by Stanley Cortez, who shot Orson Welles’ “The Magnificent Ambersons” and Charles Laughton’s “Night of the Hunter.”

“Shock Corridor” follows the experiences of an ambitious reporter (Peter Breck) who goes to unusual extremes in hopes of getting a story that will win him a Pulitzer Prize. To solve a murder in an insane asylum, he pretends to be a sex pervert, enlisting his stripper-girlfriend (Constance Towers) to pose as his concerned sister, and has himself committed so he’ll be able to befriend the inmates who witnessed the crime. Naturally, things do not go exactly as he’d planned and the experience begins to threaten his own sanity.

During the course of the reporter’s investigation, however, Fuller uses the conversations with patients as a vivid and often moving means to explore political hypocrisy in American attitudes towards communism and collaborators, racism and integration and nuclear war, not to mention sexual hang-ups and abuse of the institutionalized. In keeping with his occasionally experimental techniques, a few brief dream/fantasy sequences are in color in the otherwise black and white film. A good film, it sometimes shows its low budget and occasionally seems a bit overly contrived in its daring approach.

“The Naked Kiss” gets off to a rousing start with a subjective hand-held camera switching viewpoints back and forth as a prostitute is beating up her crooked pimp. Constance Towers stars as a high-class hooker who moves to a small town and decides to start a new life for herself, getting a job taking care of crippled children at a local medical center instead of moving into the brothel across the river. The cynical local cop (Anthony Eisley) questions her motives, especially when she falls for the rich playboy who is the town’s financial benefactor (Michael Dante), but she persists and even helps disillusioned young nurse friends avoid taking up her former career. Of course, unexpected complications suddenly change the direction of the plot completely for its final act when she’s arrested for murder.

Throughout “The Naked Kiss” there is a stronger literary sense, with a variety of allusions to classical literature and music, as well as occasional in-jokes referencing Fuller’s own previous work (including “Shock Corridor”). The story is in some ways more conventional than “Shock Corridor,” but is perhaps even more powerful in exploring its characters’ confrontation with narrow-minded prejudice and preconceived conclusions from “respectable” citizens. Towers’ fine performance, a complex interpretation by Eisley, and brief but solid supporting roles by Hollywood veterans Patsy Kelly, Betty Bronson and Virginia Grey do much to give the film a depth beyond a simple noir melodrama or the more obvious thrills and social commentary of “Shock Corridor.” The layers of plot and character are far richer than the drive-in or grindhouse fare that its trailer implies.

Both films have excellent high-definition transfers with strong mono audio. Unfortunately neither has an audio commentary, but each includes a roughly 30-page illustrated booklet with a critical essay and excerpts from Fuller’s autobiography. Each disc also has an interesting (though standard-def) half-hour interview with Towers about the particular film, plus a hi-def trailer for the film. “Shock Corridor” includes an hour-long documentary about Fuller, whereas “The Naked Kiss” has over an hour’s worth of extracts from three interviews with Fuller made for European television.

“SHOCK CORRIDOR” on Blu-ray – Movie:  B+  /  Video:  A+  /  Audio:  A   /  Extras:  B

“THE NAKED KISS” on Blu-ray – Movie:  A   /  Video:  A+  /  Audio:  A   /  Extras:  B

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