TrueJoshNight Truly Dreadful Film

SpunkySelfTwitter It’s an especially fun movie from a director and cast who are clearly having a good time allowing themselves to let loose.

GarnettTeenage The film was still a fun one that will make you laugh and have you leaving the theater feeling like you just stole something valuable and got away with it.

ChicDragon It's a mild crowd pleaser for people who are exhausted by blockbusters.

EyeAskance Pretty, young Juliet Prowse is a NYC discotheque DJ being stalked by sex-psycho Sal Mineo in this flawed but ahead-of-its-time shocker, a film which might appeal to enthusiasts of Sam Fuller's contemporaneous work.With art-house application to grindhouse material, WHO KILLED TEDDY BEAR should have a broader appeal than it does. Performances are strong by the most of the cast(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 marred significantly 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, the overall production values are pretty low. Fortunately, the tawdriness of the whole affair calls for just that, and WHO KILLED TEDDY BEAR succeeds, perhaps despite itself. It's a gripping, stark, and quite depressing meditation on obsession, loneliness and perversion which touches bravely on every taboo in the book. Nonetheless, this rife lurid sensationalism feels strangely at-odds with the customary sleaze that exploitation cinema celebrates...the tone here is otherwise rather cautionary, perhaps 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. Classic of its kind.

olddiscs I couldn't believe how this unrecognized unheralded film of the mid 1960s captured the sleaziness & the downfall of NYC during that time The photography is amazing.. the score capturers the early disco era... Sal Mineo is unbelievably sensuous, erotic, neurotic, as is Elaine Stritch who plays the Lesbian, Marian wonderful performances.. Juliet Prowse is good in this role..Plot is a bit confusing.. and why did they cast Jan Murray (great TV comic game show host of that era) in this role? Ill never know.... But as I stated before, this film captures the sleazy, unclean, dark, cold snowy sado masochistic, days of NYC in the mid 1960s when that city was on the decline.. Broadway might have been booming, Babs was on B'WAY live in Funny Girl, The Merm was still around. ETC .but the side streets, the crime, the sex shops were running abound..this film captures it all..worth seeing and or buying if it becomes .. available, Bravo ,Sal Mineo. Elaine Stritch, and the director...

big_bellied_geezer Read Son of Cathode's review as he has it right about this great piece of film making that has somehow gone mostly unnoticed by those that fancy dark and gritty films. This film delivers in spades and in my final estimation, I can only add to what others have said before me in saying this was way ahead of it's time when one considers technique.However, if this was attempted to have been made let's say in 1976 as opposed in 1965, it might of lost something in capturing the gritty underbelly which was somewhat different than the gritty style of a decade earlier and the finished product might have been too slick and obvious for 1976. I'm glad that the film makers were bold enough to have taken on such a project when they did it in 1965 and this film stands as a testament to their boldness. Look online at some of the big online auctions and you can commonly find this title now days for under 20 bucks and well worth it as this is a must see film for those who REALLY like the noir style.

bmacv Every now and again, a movie washes up on the fringes of the industry that's unlike anything else of its time – or any time. Who Killed Teddy Bear (no question mark) certainly qualifies; rarely discussed or even mentioned, it's not quite forgotten, either – it's hard to forget.By 1965, the barriers were starting to be breached in what could be shown, or even implied, on the screen (Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf dates from that year). But Who Killed Teddy Bear rubs, brusquely and suggestively, against just about every taboo obtaining then or now. It's a New York story, but of the grotty 1960s, when Manhattan led the nation as an example of how American cities were surrendering to crime and vice and ugliness at the core.Spinning platters in a seedy discotheque, Juliet Prowse starts getting obscene phone calls then finds a decapitated teddy bear in her apartment. Police detective Jan Murray takes the case, which holds an obsessive interest for him. Four years earlier his wife had been raped and murdered; now the world of perversion and fetishism has become his life, both professionally and privately (despite a young daughter, who listens to him listening to his lurid tapes from her bedroom). Prowse becomes so shaken by the stalking that she can't quite trust him, or for that matter her tough-as-nails boss Elaine Stritch, who, invited home to serve as protection, makes a pass at her. Shown the door, Stritch, in a slip and fur coat, wanders the dark streets and back alleys, where....Top billing goes to Sal Mineo, 10 years after his debut as Plato in Rebel Without A Cause, as a waiter in the club. Back home he has a child-like grown sister, whom he locks in the closet when he's making the rounds of the porn shops and peep shows near Times Square. Though his character isn't gay, he's served up like prime, pre-Stonewall beefcake, halfway between raw and blue; towards the end, when Prowse teaches him to dance, he erupts like a go-go boy.The movie bears all the marks of a starvation budget, but for once the saturated photography and jumpy cutting seem just right. The odd but savvy cast – even the young Daniel J. `Travanty' makes his debut as a deaf-mute bouncer – brings from Broadway and east-coast television a rough edge that's far from Hollywood's buffed and smooth product. But it's the vision of the TV-reared director, Joseph Cates, and writers Arnold Drake and Leon Tokatyan that makes Who Killed Teddy Bear so hard to shake. Neither a tidy thriller nor a nuanced character study, it nonetheless has a trump card to play: It's the real McCoy,a genuine creepshow.