STOP! Don't Trip Over that Ending :: A Beer-Gut Reaction to Michael Anderson's The Naked Edge (1961)

Six years after her husband's crucial testimony sent a co-worker to prison for murdering their boss, the wife (Kerr) stumbles upon a conspiracy to blackmail the star witness. Seems the blackmailer claims it was the husband (Cooper) who actually committed the murder, who then framed an innocent man for it.

Now, there's a lot of tangential and circumstantial evidence to back up this claim, too, which puts, quite obviously, some major strains on their marriage. And the deeper she digs, the more guilty her ever-evasive spouse looks, putting herself in mortal danger in the process. And all of this leads to a pretzel'd climax that will leave you guessing over who is really guilty till the bitter end.

From the scriptwriter (Joseph Stefano) to it's plot (which mirrors Suspicion quite fiercely), The Naked Edge owes a lot to Alfred Hitchcock. This would be Cooper's last film, who was apparently so sick he required frequent breaks for an oxygen assist between takes -- you can definitely see the toll it was taking on him.

Sadly, Cooper passed away before the film was released and it subsequently crashed and burned at the box-office, which I find odd because it wasn't all that bad. Sure, Kerr kinda overplays the overwrought, passive/aggressive wife; and the plot is a little too lather, rinse, repeat as it unfolds -- with each piece of new evidence uncovered leading to a confrontation between our couple, resulting in the same accusations and the same fishy denials followed by a temporary truce until the next piece of evidence is found.

Still, double-extra bonus points from me for a cameo by Peter Cushing as the prosecuting attorney. And I won't spoil who really done it, because despite these harrowing hiccups the last thirteen minutes definitely flash-fires this thing into the win column for me. 

The Naked Edge (1961) Pennebaker-Baroda Productions :: United Artists / EP: Marlon Brando Sr. / P: George Glass, Walter Seltzer / D: Michael Anderson / W: Joseph Stefano, Max Ehrlich (novel) / C: Erwin Hillier / E: Gordon Pilkington / M: William Alwyn / S: Gary Cooper, Deborah Kerr, Eric Portman, Hermione Gingold, Peter Cushing

For the Love of Hitchcock :: Trailer Park :: We All Go a Little Crazy Sometimes. Some of Us Just a Little Bit More Than Others...

When a lovelorn secretary makes the mistake of embezzling $40,000 from her employer and hits the open road to help jump-start a new life with her cash-strapped and alimony-ized beau, her guilty conscience soon gets the better of her. Too bad mother nature had to kick up that storm, then. And even worse: her choice of accommodations to escape the same; an off, off road motel where, well ... Why hear it from me when you can hear what happens next from the man himself:

Video courtesy of RandyX27.

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"I aim to provide the public with beneficial shocks. Civilization has become so protective that we're no longer able to get our goosebumps instinctively. The only way to remove the numbness and revive our moral equilibrium is to use artificial means to bring about the shock. The best way to achieve that, it seems to me, is through a movie."

-- Alfred Hitchcock

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As the legend goes, the main reason Psycho even got made was to test a theory. Seems Hitchcock was intrigued at all the money the cheaper, black and white B-pictures were making in the late 1950's and wondered how much money they'd make if they shot an A-Picture in the same, no-frills style. (One also has to wonder if the director was also intrigued by what these smaller independents could get away with onscreen without all the big studio interference.)


Thus, putting this theory to the test, using the crew from his TV show, and an adapted screenplay by future famed Outer Limits scribe Joseph Stefano, Hitchcock's experiment was shot under the strictest security as not to spoil any of the surprises the director had planned for the audience. And when those shocks were punctuated by Bernard Hermann's buzz-sawing, all string-instrumental score, the audience never knew what hit them, proving that a boy's best friend is most definitely not his mother in some cases and made plenty a'viewer think twice before registering at any off the road motels or closing their shower curtains.


For the record, the nude model who doubled for Janet Leigh, in all those different cuts, covered in Bosco's Milk Amplifier (chocolate syrup), for the notoriously immortal shower-sequence was Marli Renfro, who appeared on the cover of Playboy in September, 1960, only three months after the film premiered -- appropriately enough, photographed taking a shower.


Also of note, the voice of Mother Bates was provided by an uncredited Virginia Gregg, a prolific TV actress and one of Jack Webb's favorite fill-ins.


Eroded over time and diluted by thousands of imitators (-- and most of them pretty damned awful), the film still packs a hefty punch -- especially if you don't look at it as a horror movie, as most misidentify it to be, but as the blackest of black comedies as it was originally intended. A theory, I think, is proven out by that fantastic trailer above. All told, I think authors Robert Harris and Michael Lansky said it best:

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"With Psycho Hitchcock directs the audience more than the actors. Shot for shot, cut for cut, the director knows he was using pure cinema to arouse audience emotions...The film is a flimsy vehicle on which Hitchcock can play with our emotions and miscalculated expectations."

The Films of Alfred Hitchcock
(Citadel Press)

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Other Points of Interest:

The newspaper ads for Psycho at the Morgue.

This post is part of the For the Love of Film Blogathon, a new age telethon to raise funds for The National Film Preservation Foundation to help bring The White Shadow (a/k/a White Shadows), an early silent film that a certain master of suspense did just about everything for except direct — assistant director, screenwriter, film editor, production designer, art director, and set decorator, to the streaming masses and help defray the costs of adding a new musical soundtrack.

There’s no donation too small, folks. So please, click on the link above, wherever you see it this week and give what you can. Thanks. For more information, check out the group’s Facebook page. Big thanks, as always, to Ferdy on Film, The Self-Styled Siren and This Island Rod for throwing such a wide net for contributors. Until next time, then, I bid you all a good ev-ah-ning.

I’m participating. Are you?

Psycho (1960) Shamley Productions :: Paramount Pictures / P: Alfred Hitchcock / D: Alfred Hitchcock / W: Joseph Stefano, Robert Bloch (novel) / C: John L. Russell / E: George Tomasini / M: Bernard Hermann / S: Anthony Perkins, Janet Leigh, Vera Miles, John Gavin, Martin Balsam