Archive for June, 2011
Joe Don Baker is Mitchell, an abrasive alcoholic police detective. Very much an anti-hero Mitchell often ignores the orders of his superiors and demonstrates disdain for by-the-book police work as well as normal social graces. The film also stars John Saxon and Martin Balsam as the criminals Mitchell pursues and Linda Evans shows up as Mitchell’s prostitute girlfriend.
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I have been watching drive-in/b-movie type films for years, but I must still be a little naive, because this movie, much like The Babysitter, surprised me with the type of content it got away with in 1964. The modern viewer starts an old black & white movie that looks like it is going to be a low rent film noir and they have certain expectations about what kinds of plot elements they will see. They might expect to a private eye or an unfaithful husband going up against his gold digging wife. What they probably won’t expect is a bald hooker beating the crap out of the pimp who shaved her head and stole her money. This is, however, what they get at the start of The Naked Kiss and that isn’t even the biggest surprise to come.
There is a lot I want to say about this one, but to talk about the part that I didn’t see coming would spoil a huge plot point in the movie, so I can’t. The movie follows a prostitute who is forced to flee the big city following the pimp-beating discussed above. We learn that she has spent the past few years working small towns and staying on the move. After arriving the latest in her succession of little burgs, she has finds a client in the local law man who, right after paying her, tells her to get out of town. instead she decides to settle down and leave her street walking days behind. To that end, she rents a room at a local boarding house, gets a job working with children at the hospital, and begins a relationship with the wealthy town big wig, who is also friends with the cop she slept with.
A bit of the movie is taken up with her settling in, talking a local girl out of taking a job with the local madam, coming clean to her new beau and trying to convince his cop buddy that she isn’t just after his friend’s money. Very Lifetime type stuff, right? Well, sort of of, but just as she is about to marry her seeming perfect fiance, something happens that shakes things up completely and turns the movie in a whole new direction
This is a good little b-movie with a main character that you can root for and a couple neat surprises. That is what is so great about plumbing the depths of the public domain, every now and then, you find a neat little movie like this.
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A group of female jewel thieves stage a daring jailbreak and head into the swamp in search of the stashed loot from their previous job. Joining them is another inmate, who is really an undercover cop hoping they will lead her to the missing jewels. When the police woman’s cover is blown, her companions take her hostage and, because this is a Roger Corman movie and Roger knows what we want, the group begins to fight amongst themselves and cat fights ensue.
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