Who Killed Teddy Bear

This film is truly a work of art of the highest magnitude and no, I am not kidding. Shot in glorious, high-contrast black-and-white, it reeks of exploitation from the note of the cheesy theme song all the way through the strobe-cut ending and every horn-blaring, high-heeling, hip-grinding moment in between. Sal Mineo plays a busboy obsessed with aspiring actress/club DJ Juliet Prowse (and Prowse is at her foxiest in this one, with her pencil skirts, kitten heels and cat eyes), coming off like a perverted puppy dog.

The obscene phone call bits--all heavy breathing, bulging tighty whiteys and sweat--will make you want to leave the theatre and take a shower. Or, if that isn't nasty enough for you, how about the scene with bulldyke Elaine Stritch fondling Prowse's fur (so to speak), or the retarded kid sister locked in the closet or the policeman obsessively playing audio tapes of various twisted criminal's confessions as his daughter listens wide-eyed from the other side of the door? Or how about the "twist lesson" that brings the film to it's climax (no pun intended)? Another asset of this great piece of cinema are its New York City location shots, especially when Mineo goes walking the city at night, looking for filth in scenes that must've influenced "Taxi Driver" (also love the W.S. Burroughs titles in the window of the "dirty bookshop"). I cannot recommend this movie highly enough. It's not available on video (Curses!), so if it's ever screened at the theater or on TV in your area, be there.

Uneven, not very well paced and with some poor elements, this low budget piece of sleaze is still a good example of what can be done with a good idea, some decent actors and some balls. Great location shooting around Times Square/42nd Street clashes somewhat with some very flat interior sequences but all the electrifying disco scenes are excellent. Prowse really can dance and if Sal Mineo thinks he's auditioning all over again for Rebel Without A Cause, who can blame him with that physique. Lots of tasteless matters are gleefully paraded before us and even within the movie the lieutenant takes his dirty phone call research home never minding that his daughter is listening in. As others have mentioned, Scorsese must have seen this and in any event this would make a great double bill with Taxi Driver, also one would have to say that this is more sleazy and less glamorised than the more well known film. On a final note, how times change; completely rejected by the UK censors in 1965 is now released with 15 certificate.

Pretty, young Juliet Prowse is a NYC discotheque DJ being stalked by an unassuming sex-psycho(Sal Mineo) in this flawed but hard-hitting post noir shocker, a film perched on the median between arthouse and grindhouse which might appeal to enthusiasts of Sam Fuller's contemporaneous work.

Performances are strong from the key players(especially Elaine Stritch as Prowse's inured lesbian boss, Jan Murray as the solicitous investigator, and Mineo...a deeply disturbed but ultimately pitiable predator). Unfortunately, the film is blemished markedly by the comically written and overplayed character of Mineo's little sister, doomed to eternal childhood as the result of a tragic accident.

Though there is intermittent creative camera-work at hand, production values are pretty low overall. Fortunately, the tawdriness of the whole affair calls for just that, and WHO KILLED TEDDY BEAR succeeds, perhaps despite itself. It's a stark and quite depressing rumination on obsession, loneliness and perversion which touches brazenly on every taboo in the book. Somehow, this rife lurid sensationalism feels strangely at-odds with itself...the tone here seems more sententious than defiant, possibly an ill-boding advisory propelled by the whiling fears of 60s-era reactionaries. The times, they were a-changing, and many at the far-right felt the nation's moral compass had become a pinwheel in the wind.

. 7.5/10.

Filmed entirely in real New York locations (much of it on the fly, by the look of it) and dripping with sordid Times Square atmosphere, this is a cheap, sensationalistic, slightly arty psycho-sex-thriller with a startling cast drawn from Broadway, Hollywood, and the Borscht Belt. Elaine Stritch is unforgettable as a lesbian in furs, and the camera drools over Mineo and Prowse in various degrees of undress amidst acres of risibly salacious dialogue. If all this weren't tempting enough, three original songs by Al Kasha and Bob Gaudio grace the very 60's soundtrack (and is that an unbilled Joanie Sommers singing the haunting title theme?) Director Cates is Phoebe's dad, and had done much classier stuff on TV before it fled west.

"Who Killed Teddy Bear" is irresistible trash, an utterly sleazy film that wallows in B-movie murk without apology. The performances are fine (with the camera leering at the often half-dressed Mineo and Prowse), the script is the stuff of now-extinct 42nd Street grindhouses, and the cinematography seems right out of an early '60s voyeuristic fantasy. This one is guaranteed to touch a salacious chord in anyone with the nerve to sit through.