95-The Naked Kiss - Director: Samuel Fuller - Cast: Constance Towers, Anthony Eisley, Michael Dante, Virginia Grey,and Patsy Kelly.

"A film is like a battleground. There's love. Hate. Action. Violence. Death. In one word, emotions."

-Samuel Fuller-
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" I don't think 'Shock Corridor' or 'The Naked Kiss' can really be considered film noir. True they're in black-and-white but that's about it."

-Samuel Fuller-

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"I wanted it to be a shocking film. You know the opening, the victim's point of view as the call girl beats on him, the visual shock when her wig comes off; but after that, the audience knows who she is. There's no surprise there. What I wanted was the whole concept of a a caste system--not the formal one like they have in India or Japan--but a real sense among the social outcasts that there is something so vile, so low, that even they must scorn it. In prisons, you know, the convicts all revile the child molesters. They call them chicken hawks, and a lot of them get killed by murderers and thieves who are outraged at what they did. And that's the hypocrisy in our society. Constance Towers is a hooker but she has a moral belief. She tries to change her life, thinks it's going to happen, finds out this guy is scum, and kills him. And when they find out about her past everybody assumes she's guilty as hell. I guess that is something of a film noir situation, but for me the irony was more straight-forward. She is a hooker for business reasons. She loves children for personal reasons. She can love kids and be a good person and still go back to being a hooker without a second thought because that's just business. Again I hate the cliché, whether it's the whore with a heart of gold or that stupid, self-sacrificing stuff, like Stella Dallas."

-Samuel Fuller-

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"Being a hooker does not mean being evil. The same with a pick-pocket, or even a thief. You do what you do out of necessity. The people who look down on you are just prejudiced, like the townspeople who deride Constance Towers when they think she's a killer and find out about her past and then cannot face her when they discover she actually did something heroic. That's what I wanted to show and that's what I thought was shocking. The irony was a woman who has struggled, finds what she thinks is happiness, the whole nine yards, then finds out it's all a lie. After it's all smashed to bits, she can still pick up the pieces because she still has her own integrity. But nobody got it. It went over like a lead balloon, probably because it was too shocking and distasteful. "

-Samuel Fuller-