Who Killed Teddy Bear?

noen4.0

I’ve never seen anyone talk about this film, which is why it felt like such an incredible discovery. It’s lurid, sleazy, trashy, and sordid, in the best possible way. There’s no nudity, due to the restrictions of the Hays Code, but it still dives into taboo subjects like pornography, voyeurism, incest, and lesbianism. What it lacks in explicit content, it more than makes up for in atmosphere, a sweaty, paranoid portrait of mid-century sexual panic.The film captures perfectly the uneasy mood between the repressed 1950s and the liberated 1970s, giving us a rare look at the fears and tensions people were experiencing during that time of change. For anyone interested in the evolution of screen violence and sexuality, this is a crucial missing link — bridging the voyeuristic psychodramas of Peeping Tom and Psycho with the urban alienation of Taxi Driver, the dread of Black Christmas, and the stylized perversion of Italian giallo. Highly recommended.

Sean Baker

Interesting find. I had no knowledge of this film and found it because I read that the film had a ton of footage of 42nd St. and Times Square including detailed shots of grindhouse theaters. And it does! Sal Mineo enters a theater playing Hollywood's World of Flesh.But turns out this film has an interesting history. It pretty much bombed in the US and didn't even receive a certification by the BBFC because of subject matter. Seems it was too explicit compared to the British thrillers (that were sexual in nature) of the time. Juliet Prowse and Elaine Stritch shine. And the B&W cinematography by Joseph C. Brun is lush.SPECIAL FEATURES- Trailer- Court Martial episode - LSD: Insight or Insanity?- Stills gallery- PDF materialWatched the Network Blu-ray

pirateneckbeard3.5

This really is tough teddy bear to wrestle. On one hand it's easily to dismiss this material as a made for "Television" like film that weakly codes it's material for a light rating and doesn't have the cohenoes to show it but equally you have to realize the time and trying to sell this to a viable market and personally I think this works even if they got too inventive at times, I reward someone for going for it. This film centres around Norah(Juliet Prowse) as a discotheque DJ in New York who is receiving breathy random phone calls when she is at home but after an incident at her work she let's that detail drop and a detective takes a keen interest in here plight. This all really builds up a lot of who is the voice until we find out halfway through and then turns to how can she remain safe when she doesn't know who to stay away from. The dialogue is cheesy at times but feel what the images infer create a sharper structure to what this material wants to be. I was impressed With Sal Mineo's(Lawrence) performance cause it's very coded into his profile. I still say it's sharp in it's structure of what it doesn't say and would recommend giving this Teddy Bear of a film a hug as long as you can handle some messed up narratives.Spoiler aheadI think Lawrence was seduced by his mom which caused his sisters fall and mental challenges which also *left to his mothers suicide- and left him to take care of his sister alone and thinking it was his own fault while screwing up his relationships with women... just my thoughts* The mother never comes up in this film FYI