GamerTab That was an excellent one.

Neive Bellamy Excellent and certainly provocative... If nothing else, the film is a real conversation starter.

Adeel Hail Unshakable, witty and deeply felt, the film will be paying emotional dividends for a long, long time.

Edwin The storyline feels a little thin and moth-eaten in parts but this sequel is plenty of fun.

FilmFlaneur I really can't understand the low rating here for a movie I enjoyed thoroughly from end to end. The two leads work well together with John Forsythe, more familiar from soap work on TV in later years, reminding me at times of a cut-rate Henry Fonda. Sure, Ann-Margaret tears the scenery up some, but let's not forget her character is supposed to be emotionally unbalanced, and that she's a woman frequently playing for sympathy, then threat, often within a few moments of each other. I found it more of a misjudgment that, as David, Forsythe never really acted a man coming unstuck as events crowded in on him.No one I think has mentioned the music for this movie which is generally excellent, and which lifts, slightly rearranged, a couple of Mancini cues from Touch of Evil! They fit in quite effectively. Director Heyes, who largely worked within television does an excellent job with some interesting set ups (including the notable motel fight) while the cinematography, full of light and shade composition by the experienced Joseph Biroc, would have graced an A-production.Ultimately this is an excellent exploitation movie with no slack scenes and a compelling narrative, albeit with some dated 'hip' dialogue, principally from the later, intruding, trio. I'd recommend it to anyone who is looking for the real thing. My DVD file is excellent, crisp and clear.

Lee Eisenberg I wouldn't call "Kitten with a Whip" as bad as some of the movies that "Mystery Science Theater 3000" has riffed, but it's still basically a turkey. This story of a juvenile delinquent hiding in a senator's house comes as across as an excuse to show off Ann-Margret's body. The movie DOES have that going for it, but the rest of the cast doesn't have much to do.To poke fun at the movie, Mike and the 'bots imply that a doll-filled room is Michael Jackson's room and say that an elderly man is Laurence Olivier. At one point they even meet an actual whip-bearing kitten (played by MST3K cast member Kevin Murphy).Basically, it's the sort of movie that they probably had fun making. It was likely a surprise to everyone when Ann-Margret starred in "Carnal Knowledge", "Tommy" and "Magic". More recently she appeared in "Any Given Sunday" and the suspense thriller "Memory".Seriously, Dr. Forrester. What's the big idea of using TV's Frank as a piñata?

rajah524-3 KWAW may be stuck in the ill-paced cage of a '60s TV melodrama, but the source material from pulp author Wade Miller is downright Diana Russell, Ellen Bass, Laura Davis, Andrew Vachss and Judith Lewis Herman in 1985. Which is to say, sexually abused hottie teener goes manipulative, man-hating borderline barracuda."Borderline" is the operative word here, yet it was almost unknown back in '64. And it wasn't until the dawn of the feminist movement in psychotherapy in the late '70s or so that =anybody= much connected the sort of character Ann's playing here to serial incest and/or molestation.At the time, in fact, most of the so-called "authorities" on juvenile delinquency thought runaway girls were just "evil." That most of them =were= what Jody claims to be was rarely given much credence in the '60s. And it was well into the '80s before most psychotherapists understood that "borderline personality disorder" was the expectable result.Miller has it down. Borderlines =are= little girls in adult bodies who fear... and rage... and need... and hate... and seduce... and abuse. And flip back and forth just as quickly as their emotional state of the moment demands. "Jody" may seem to be a little "cardboard" in her duplicity here, but hysteric borderlines often are. (Miller's "Jody" seems to be built on the most significant traits of the borderline personality described in the first Diagnostic and Statistical Manual back in 1952.) Too bad the film wasn't directed by Stanley Kubrick who did a better job with a better book about the same topic two years earlier. That one was called "Lolita."

tostinati Director Douglas Heyes oversaw 9 of the better Twilight Zone episodes, including the classic Eye of the Beholder, and one of the 2 or 3 best Boris Karloff Presents Thriller episodes (The Purple Room). Bringing this context to Kitten With A Whip, you realize you are in the hands of a master storyteller, and also, exactly what you are in for: a not-quite-fantasy but nonetheless feverishly nightmarish Twilight Zone episode.As with the best TZ episodes, you are asked what you would do if something on the scale between patently impossible to utterly insane happened to you. The setup is simple. A mentally unbalanced teenager sneaks into your house while you are away, threatens you with accusations of rape and the destruction of your political ambition (which appear about to reach fruition) to gain control once you return home, and effectively takes over your life. It is like a typical TZ scenario, a Twilight Zone-style turning a character's 'normal' life on its head, and letting the angst and desperate quest for an out flow from there.I see no big theme here, other than the noir theme of crazy fate putting its finger on you. That seems to be the entire point here. Separated from Serling's big theme plots that showed man against himself in the form of prejudice and fear, Heyes may seem a bit lost. But his directorial hand is sure as ever, and the story is as engrossingly told as that of any TZ episode. I suspect Heyes enjoyed taking TV's Bachelor Father and subverting the precepts of his bourgeois existence in the rudest, most thoroughly shaming way possible. Maybe, after all is said and done, it is through subversion that Heyes gets his chance to challenge the bourgeois status quo, as he did routinely while working with Serling. For many- and yes, possibly even the director- Kitten works as a jet black comedy.This film doesn't have a great reputation, though among its undeniable assets it boasts a fine performance from a man often unfairly given the Bob Cummings light comic actor brush-off by Hollywood. John Forsythe would appear In Cold Blood a couple of years later, another film light years away from the scrubbed sitcom milieu.8 stars. Give it a spin.