Who knows how such folklore gets passed around, but something every guy just seems to “know” is the crazier the woman, the better the sex. John Forsyth never consummates a relationship with Ann-Margret in 1964’s Kitten with a Whip, but I felt that was the unspoken message underlying the picture.
When we first see her, she is only wearing a nightgown and she is fleeing on foot at night. We don’t see what she is running from, but we see close-ups of security guards and snarling dogs as she scales walls and even jumps onto a boxcar. I never thought I could imagine a coupling of words as bizarre as “sexy hobo”, but here we are.
Even in these opening moments, the crisp black-and-white photography is fantastic. With the exception of some artlessly lit studio interiors, the photography often makes great use of shadows. There’s even a moment near the end where handheld camera in a small room makes a fist fight feel especially violent and chaotic.
It is also an intelligently shot film, where we are shown images and forced to connect the dots ourselves. Early in the picture, Ann-Margret is hiding in a bush outside a large suburban house. A close-up on her face transitions to a shot of multiple newspapers on the lawn, and then back to her, where we see she understands the occupants are currently away.
She breaks into the house and falls asleep in a bedroom that is obviously that of a little girl. Although we don’t see her explore any more of the house at this point, this seemed to parallel the Goldilocks story, as she quickly falls asleep in a room with lots of cartoon bear imagery on the walls, as well as many teddy bears. She grabs one of these and curls up around it. There’s a slow zoom in on the bear’s wide, glassy eyes and it is easy to imagine fear in those inanimate discs. The bears will be innocent here—it’s Goldilocks that is the threat.
Forsyth plays a likely contender to be the candidate for an upcoming presidential election, only to find this strange woman in his daughter’s bedroom. His immediate response is to call the authorities, but she stalls him with one falsehood after another before settling on one that scans as true, that she is fleeing an acquaintance of her mother’s who has raped her.
I suspect that, or something like it, happened in this character’s past. But what Forsyth doesn’t know is the more immediate threat she fled from is from the authorities, after she escaped juvenile hall. In the course of her escape, he stabbed a guard and set fire to the facility.
Ann-Margret’s initial gratitude for not calling the cops quickly turns into threats of blackmail, as she states she will cry rape if Forsythe tries to get her out of the house. The TV behind her shows Sylvester the Cat trying to eradicate a mouse by stuffing dynamite into a hole in a baseboard and then lighting the match. Another moment has a kid’s show host saying he is next going to talk to kids about a fun game they will play with adults. We don’t learn what he has to say, but Ann-Margret has games of her own in mind.
She’ll invite other players to the game as her friends Peter Brown, Skip Ward and Diane Sayer arrive. Although these are early 60’s Hollywood sketches of bad characters, the guys do have a genuine air of menace about them. Ward may be an outright thug, but Brown is genuinely creepy, with a smug air of superiority that comes from a moneyed family and higher education. I bet Brown’s character is a big fan of Nietzsche. I’ve overused the word “games” in this critique and, go figure, he reminds me of the villains in Funny Games.
There’s a lot to like in this movie, even if it frequently veers dangerously close to camp. I am especially divided on Ann-Margret’s performance. She handles the wildly mercurial shifts of the character’s personality very well, but she also consistently overplays. It’s like she is an expert at shifting gears at precisely the right moment, but she just can’t seem to lay off the accelerator.
Of the other performances here, Forsythe as the suffering everyman fares the best. Some of the best moments in the film is when he is with others of his peer group and he has to spin up fantastic lies on the spot to cover his predicament. In those moments, there are times where so much more is conveyed through character’s eyes than what comes out their mouths. I especially liked this exchange towards the end, where an important woman grills him about an alleged car accident that brings him to a place he really shouldn’t be: “How did the accident happen?” “I hit a fence post.” “How did you do that?” “Well…it wasn’t easy.”
Kitten with a Whip occupies a strange space for me. It is too well-made and scripted to be dismissed. Also, it is hard to fault any of the performances, even if all the “teens” appear to be at or over the 30-year mark. And yet, I can see how many people read the film as high camp. Myself, I recommend it and believe this work has many merits, regardless of how it is interpreted.
Dir: Douglas Heyes
Starring Ann-Margret, John Forsythe, Peter Brown
Watched on Imprint Australia blu-ray