The Naked Road

"The Naked Road" has a pathetic overall score of 4.9 at this time...indicating that it's probably a very bad movie. However, despite a low budget and mostly unknown actors, it manages to work very well and is quite entertaining.

The story is about a young model who is at heart a very nice girl. When the film begins, she's on a date with a real creep who simply believes models are glorified prostitutes. The jerk even goes so far as to suggest they go to a hotel and that she put out! He's very blunt, crude...and married. Soon he ends up trying to drive her home, as she'll have none of this monkey business. But on the way, he's arrested for speeding and they're both brought to see the judge. Now why she had to do and what happens next are huge problems in the movie as it just doesn't make sense. The judged demands the jerk pay a fine in cash...and lets him go home to get the money and keeps the model as collateral!! This is pretty dumb...fortunately the rest of the film is much more intelligent.

Soon another law breaker arrives in court and after promptly paying his fine, he offers to drive the lady home. Instead, however, he takes her to a house and holds her prisoner for days...starving her and threatening to get her hooked on drugs to make her turn tricks. And, since no one seems to know where she is, rescue from this prison is unlikely...however, she steadfastly refuses to cooperate and become a prostitute.

The film is very tense and the acting surprisingly good. All in all, aside from the brief portion in court which made no sense, it's a gritty and exciting and tense little film you can currently find on YouTube.

Model Gay Andrews, who looks rather like Shelly Fabares, is a loner in NYC. She gets a come on from married ad executive Bob Walker, a Steve Cochran look-a-like, after a gig in New Jersey. He wants to continue their necking session at a hot sheet motel. She turns him down but on their way back to NYC they get pulled over by a cop who hauls them to a corrupt JP who is in cahoots with a local pimp Wayne Jackson played by big man Ronald Long ( Love of Life (1951), The Notorious Landlady (1962) and The List of Adrian Messenger (1963)) who both resembles and sounds like an Alfred Hitchcock with hair.

When Walker leaves to get money so that he can pay his fine in cash, the JP detains Andrews as a hostage until his return. Long is on hand an hour later to rescue Andrews. He pays the $100 fine and the JP tells her she's free. Long offers to give her a ride, seemingly a good Samaritan. At a cafe Long slips a drug into Gay's drink and she wakes up at Longs house. A Classic tale of don't go home with strangers.

Koulias is good as Long's right hand man. The entire story is an instructional on white slavery, but its poster decries the "Public Relations Racket", the girl is first offered $50,000 for one year of service with the guarantee that she can go free after the year is up, then threatened with getting forced hooked on heroin if she won't cooperate voluntarily.

It's all done very on the cheap and is a bit clunky in spots, but the film still manages to entertain mostly by what is suggested during all the descriptive dialog (supplied mostly by Long) rather than what actually happens. So far so good in Something Weird's "Six Weird Noirs" DVD pack.

Jean Rainier is held by Ronald Long and his associates until she agrees to work for him in his publicity department, dating clients and, seeping with them ..... they talk around the subject in the stupidest manner, doubtless because of the Production Code. There are hints they will get her hooked on unspecified drugs, but it's all discussed in such a vague manner that there's no sense of actual menace of White Slavery, as it used t be called. While it is true that the vagueness could be threatening, unfortunately, with the exception of Long, everyone speaks their lines as if they are reading them off a slate, and cannot read very well. Long is pompous and unctious, and thoroughly obnoxious.

It's a movie that promises sordidness, and teenaged boys probably snuck into the theaters hoping to see something prurient. If so, they were doubtless disappointed.

"Unbelievably-Fantiscally TRUE! The brutal facts behind the expose of the so-called PUBLIC RELATIONS racket!"

Despite that titillating tagline, the only thing exploitative about THE NAKED ROAD is its title and what a missed opportunity it is, too, considering the storyline. A young model (Jeanne Rainer of YOU'VE RUINED ME, EDDIE! fame) who won't put out for the married ad man she's out with is held as collateral when they're pulled over for speeding and fined by a corrupt Justice Of The Peace. Another motorist is hauled in for the same reason and he pays both their fines but the erstwhile Good Samaritan later drugs the girl's coffee and kidnaps her, intending to make her work for his public relations firm as an escort girl. If she doesn't, he'll turn her into a drug addict...

Although rife with possibilities, the movie's all talk and very little action until the end when an escort girl gets thrown out a window and the cops chuck tear gas at the bad guys' hideout. Unfortunately, the only one home is the kidnapped model. The lethargic cast acts like they're under water and the whole thing looks like it was filmed for about a buck ninety-eight in an endless succession of living rooms and bedrooms. The same room with different furniture is probably more like it. Still, I can't say I didn't like it and why I don't know.

I discovered "The Naked Road" as part of Something Weird's excellent "Weird Noir" collection.

Like everything in the set, it more than lives up to it's name.

Director William Martin, who made some other strange films around the same time, seems to have something, perhaps something feminist, on his mind. The film compares the casual exploitation by an of Ad Man of a beautiful young model (the lovely Jeanne Rainer) with out and out White Slavery. In fact, the ad man, who ultimately shrinks from his pangs of guilt, is no doubt intended to be the biggest sleazbo of them all.

Even considering that Martin had little time or budget, his approach to filmmaking is downright odd. He shoots every scene in a three or four shot with all characters in view, and just when the monotony becomes unbearable; he cuts to a close up at an utterly irrelevant moment. The actors seem to have been instructed to speak slowly and leave gaping holes between the lines. And none seem to be incompetents, tubby Ronald Long went on to a highly successful career, but his performance here is hilariously, well, odd. Martin may have been no worse or better than Ed Wood, but he had his own approach to making a terrible film.

The abrupt climax is probably all for the best, but I could have stood another 15 minutes or so of these strange goings on. And again, Jeanne Rainer, you could have been a contender.