Das Mädchen mit der Peitsche

Most juvenile delinquency films of the 1950s and early 60s were about the damage kids could inflict on themselves or their classmates. By 1964 America was perhaps subconsciously anticipating the fallout from being involved in Vietnam, and started to exhibit concern about youth's impact on the older generation. Kitten With A Whip may or not not have been Universal's answer to Paramount's Lady In A Cage, but both films convey the same message: the inmates are capable of taking over the asylum. By the end of the decade films like Wild In the Streets and Gas-s-s-s-s-s were taking this theme to its logical extreme.

Kitten With A Whip takes us on a surprisingly seedy tour of the youth underworld, and even though it's another conservative morality play with a happy ending, it serves as a valuable reminder of the social changes underway in the mid 60s. It's also incredibly entertaining.

This film was rather funny...to watch a politician help a person then proceed to pay for it through the whole movie really makes one wonder what message this film was trying to send? Is it trying to say, one should never show kindness, because in return you will end up a hostage in your own home to political science majors and their friends with cars and anger management issues. Still, the film had some moments, mainly the unintentionally funny moments and you get to see a very attractive young Ann Margaret.

The film is about a bland politician who ends up finding a very attractive girl in his daughter's bed. His wife and child are away at the time. The girl begs the man for help and he listens to her story and proceeds to buy the young lady and outfit, takes her to the bus stop and gives her some money to help her out. He later finds out that she has escaped from a juvenile facility and even stabbed one of the employees there. Well he returns home to find out that she has returned and he also finds out that she is kind of insane! She ends up making his life miserable, she invites friends that are a bit psycho themselves and he continually believes what she says and defends her at every turn.

The film was featured on MST3K and it made for a very funny episode. It helps that this film was not all that bad, as it contained plenty of fodder for Mike and the bots. It was also kind of good in a way, which always makes for the more entertaining episodes. Listening to their riffs as the politician keeps getting deeper and deeper into trouble was funny, but at the same time you kept wondering how it was going to end as well. Could he possibly get out of this situation unscathed? So while it was not an award winning movie by an means, it was entertaining in its own way. And Ann Margaret was hot, hot, HOT...back then.

Having just seen this film for the second time in some years I felt I needed to come to its defense in view of the poor ratings it has received on IMDb. Moreover I can't help but compare it to "Rebel Without a Cause" which I also recently saw again. Released nine years apart they both deal with the same subject, disaffected youth. They also both reflect their times. Whereas "Rebel" dances around young angst, "Kitten" is more honest about it, although nowhere near as raw as it would have been done today. In "Rebel" the kids are troubled but still seek comfort from their parents, in "Kitten" they're nihilistic, rebellious, disdainful of their parents' values. "Kitten" is edgy, mean, gritty. Its poverty-row production probably helped in that respect. The limited sets added to the sense of claustrophobia, the fear of exposing a dangerous secret in the open. And the references to the finality of the atom bomb add to the general sense of despair.

I found the acting competent if not outstanding. All protagonists had their highs and lows and overall they acquitted themselves rather well, even John Forsythe who does tend to be one-dimensional. I even think that may have worked in his favor playing a conflicted middle-aged man whose estranged wife is away, suddenly being confronted with a sexually charged dynamo. It seems such a man would be on the introverted side. And his suspicious attitude hinted at something sinister. After all, if he had nothing to hide, wouldn't he have reached out for help? He had plenty of opportunities but wasted them all, to the very end, when Ann-Margret walks back to the car and takes away his car keys.

One final note: Audrey Dalton had the most thankless part. She had not even one single line, no screen time at all. We only get to see her in a photo soon to be vandalized. And when Forsythe goes to buy size seven clothes for Ann-Margret we are told that Dalton's character would never fit in them. That's rather unkind because I think she's actually smaller than Ann-Margret. So to top it all off she has to suffer the indignity of being called fat, or at least big, and she doesn't get the chance to show us otherwise. Then again maybe that's just it, she doesn't have any screen time because the whole clothes scene wouldn't fit in.

Director Douglas Heyes oversaw 9 of the better Twilight Zone episodes, including the classic Eye of the Beholder, and one of the 2 or 3 best Boris Karloff Presents Thriller episodes (The Purple Room). Bringing this context to Kitten With A Whip, you realize you are in the hands of a master storyteller, and also, exactly what you are in for: a not-quite-fantasy but nonetheless feverishly nightmarish Twilight Zone episode.

As with the best TZ episodes, you are asked what you would do if something on the scale between patently impossible to utterly insane happened to you. The setup is simple. A mentally unbalanced teenager sneaks into your house while you are away, threatens you with accusations of rape and the destruction of your political ambition (which appear about to reach fruition) to gain control once you return home, and effectively takes over your life. It is like a typical TZ scenario, a Twilight Zone-style turning a character's 'normal' life on its head, and letting the angst and desperate quest for an out flow from there.

I see no big theme here, other than the noir theme of crazy fate putting its finger on you. That seems to be the entire point here. Separated from Serling's big theme plots that showed man against himself in the form of prejudice and fear, Heyes may seem a bit lost. But his directorial hand is sure as ever, and the story is as engrossingly told as that of any TZ episode. I suspect Heyes enjoyed taking TV's Bachelor Father and subverting the precepts of his bourgeois existence in the rudest, most thoroughly shaming way possible. Maybe, after all is said and done, it is through subversion that Heyes gets his chance to challenge the bourgeois status quo, as he did routinely while working with Serling. For many- and yes, possibly even the director- Kitten works as a jet black comedy.

This film doesn't have a great reputation, though among its undeniable assets it boasts a fine performance from a man often unfairly given the Bob Cummings light comic actor brush-off by Hollywood. John Forsythe would appear In Cold Blood a couple of years later, another film light years away from the scrubbed sitcom milieu.

8 stars. Give it a spin.

I really can't understand the low rating here for a movie I enjoyed thoroughly from end to end. The two leads work well together with John Forsythe, more familiar from soap work on TV in later years, reminding me at times of a cut-rate Henry Fonda. Sure, Ann-Margaret tears the scenery up some, but let's not forget her character is supposed to be emotionally unbalanced, and that she's a woman frequently playing for sympathy, then threat, often within a few moments of each other. I found it more of a misjudgment that, as David, Forsythe never really acted a man coming unstuck as events crowded in on him.

No one I think has mentioned the music for this movie which is generally excellent, and which lifts, slightly rearranged, a couple of Mancini cues from Touch of Evil! They fit in quite effectively. Director Heyes, who largely worked within television does an excellent job with some interesting set ups (including the notable motel fight) while the cinematography, full of light and shade composition by the experienced Joseph Biroc, would have graced an A-production.

Ultimately this is an excellent exploitation movie with no slack scenes and a compelling narrative, albeit with some dated 'hip' dialogue, principally from the later, intruding, trio. I'd recommend it to anyone who is looking for the real thing. My DVD file is excellent, crisp and clear.