In director Samuel Fuller's pure pulp classic, Kelly, a former prostitute, hoping to escape her brutalizing big-city life by moving to a small town, discovers even more depravity in her new, supposedly sanitized environment. When she discovers a shocking murder scene, the townspeople are quick to make accusations based on her past.
Sam Fuller's full blown pulp melodrama is straight off the pages of dime-store crime magazines. His use of arty compositions and artificial dialogue prove once again that people only talk like this in his movies. This, his seventeenth film, takes place when all the women were dames and all the men were heels. Kelly, a former prostitute, is a woman of two worlds trying to find redemption in a world controlled by men. Relocated to Grantville, a suburb where everyone is artificially decent, she soon turns into Mother Teresa, quotes Goethe and teaches cripples to walk. The infiltration goes smoothly until she discovers a shocking murder scene and her cover begins to unravel. Fuller also manages to break traditional filmmaking manners by employing jump cuts, long inner monologues, and one of the most questionably placed and maudlin musical numbers ever filmed.
The Home Vision Cinema VHS version is digitally remastered and letterboxed at the original aspect ratio. The print is from the Janus collection.
DVD Features:
Region 1
Keep Case
Full Frame - 1.33
Audio:
(unspecified) - English
Director of Photography
Stanley Cortez:
Art Director
Eugene Lourie: Art Director/Director
Review 1:
"[I]t offers a searing indictment of small-town hypocrisy."
Source: Sight and Sound
p.69-70 02/01/2004
Review 2:
"...All tabloid sensibility..." -- Rating: B+
Source: Entertainment Weekly
pp.90-1 09/18/1998
Review 3:
"...This is a glorified 'B' directed with style and punch..."
Source: USA Today
p.3D 01/11/1991
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