The Naked Kiss

Thursday, 1.40am, Talking Pictures TV

Samuel Fuller’s bold, brutal 1964 melodrama takes a wrecking ball to the hidden hypocrisies and crimes of small-town American life. Sex worker Kelly (Constance Towers) reinvents herself as a nurse for disabled children in whitepicket-fence Grantville. Despite the police chief’s refusal to believe her career change is for real, she finds a good man who loves her, Michael Dante’s wealthy local bigwig. But all is not as it appears … Fuller’s pulp fiction roots are clear in the plot’s twists, but there’s real humanity at play here, too.