Who Killed Teddy Bear

There is a 94 minute cut out there someplace....

Yet this is a remarkable film, and much better than I'd anticipated (I'd never seen it before until recently). Shot in the winter of 1964/65, it's ahead of its time and covers subject matter taboo even now, certainly for mid-'60s Hollywood... It's B&W photography is as haunted and moody as a PSYCHO-era horror film, but TEDDY BEAR has an organic quality about it most Hollywood movies don't have today and didn't have yesterday --- and it reminds those of us old enough to remember of how the cities, from the mid-'60s to the '70s, were beginning to fall apart in the wake of JFK's death and the rise of the incomprehensible Vietnam war (where all our tax dollars were going) -- when peep shows and adult "book stores", with their wares on display in the shop windows, popped up in even "nice" business districts beside Tiffany's, creating a tense and fascinating shabbiness that helped define the schism that was "the '60s".

So the cultural meltdown wasn't just about the hippies and their drugs and the acid rock and the protests which would soon follow this movie (not that there was much of a reaction to the film itself, as few people saw it then); for all the romanticizing of that decade (some of which is understandable), Walter Cronkite wasn't entirely wrong when he called the 1960s "a slum of a decade" and TEDDY BEAR hints at that better than most industry films of the time, and serves to remind us that the world of that era wasn't really all that innocent (even if it was a bit naive in other ways). Such was that echo chamber, filled with its cacophony of voices, that was the '60s -- where you had two decades seemingly shoved into one. And with this movie squarely on the cusp of both.

Good acting, taut direction, and a lot of layers going on at one time...

When you think of movies about New York from this period in time, what comes to mind to me as a foreigner is a woodwind instrument blowing in the background while Jack Lemmon (or a lookalike) in a shiny suit neurotically babbles away something insignificant. Who killed Teddy Bear comes along and sticks its fingers up at the Hollywood system and is a break thru movie in every sense. This flawed, creaky, creepy and cranky movie is a delight. Not forgetting that you are led into the wonderful atmosphere by the wailing and unforgettable theme tune, which sounds like an old 45rpm record where the center hole has not been cut quite right.

IMHO due to Hollywood, American Independent film makers were just not taken seriously enough at this time, because of this, films like this have been unfairly over looked as great examples of low budget, gorilla technique( getting the shot before the police arrives etc). Taxi Driver was classic, but you know it was meticulously planned, every location permission was got and sums agreed, shots were retaken until they got it right. Well Who Killed Teddy Bear is wild and untamed and surely a minor classic?

Very much ahead of its time - this cult film vanished almost without trace after it was released, and it's very hard to find copies of it nowadays. So I consider myself fortunate to have been exposed to this sleaze-ball of a movie.

The highlight for me was in one of the final scenes where Sal Mineo and Juliet Prowse shimmy to one of the sassiest, silliest 60s dance tunes ever invented. Sal's wearing a little cut-off shirt and as he freaks out, more and more of his midriff is exposed. Sal's a long way from Rebel Without A Cause here, and looking all the better for it. This scene is worth the entrance fee alone. The title sequence is also hilariously evocative.

Full of weird characters, almost EVERYONE in this movie has a dirty little dark side waiting to be shown.

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.

"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.