The Naked Road (1959) User Reviews

It'll talk the pants off ya

[melvelvit-1 · 5/10 · 16 September 2015]

"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.

Something weird but not that wonderful

[AlsExGal · 5/10 · 13 March 2016]

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.

Slow but the lethargic pace creates a Twilight Zone effect

[jameselliot-1 · 4/10 · 18 March 2021]

Jeanne Rainer was a pretty, shapely actress who reminded me of Adele Lamont, the attractive model in the cult classic The Brain That Wouldn't Die. They shared the same kind of sultry look and precise, serious acting style. Reading her bio here, I was very impressed.

I remembered Ronald Long best for his hilarious, snobby Sunsweet Prune commercials and also for his work on I Dream of Jeannie. Here Long is affably nasty in his plan to hook women into prostitution by drugging and kidnapping them. No doubt this was not a role and a movie that he looked back on with great affection. His henchman is even more scummy, casually killing girls for his boss when they are a threat, casually dropping one drugged girl out of a window. The acting got panned by most who bothered to review this quickie but the acting's not bad, just played out at a glacial pace. This snail pace is not for viewers hyperstimulated by the rapid cutting, action and diction of today's movies. There is no real action, just exposition. It's so mild and slow, it could have easily been broadcast on TV in 1959.

Mae West said when she's bad, she's better. This is so bad, it's bitter.

[mark.waltz · 1/10 · 8 October 2014]

There is such a thing as clever trash. There is also such a thing as so bad, it's good. Also, trash with class, a clever dirty joke, and making a silk purse out of a sow's ear. Here, the only thing clever is the art on the DVD box, the only thing good out of the bad is that it's over in 73 minutes, the class is first grade, there are no jokes, only dirt, and the field ran dry causing the cow to run away before somebody cut off his ear.

The pitiful acting here only enhances how bad the script is. Everybody speaks at a snail's pace, as if they were first graders reading a Dick and Jane book. Even when the police are calling out for a murder suspect, the actor getting to shout in the megaphone makes no effort to get the words out without pauses in between each one. Had the actors actually spoke their words at a normal speed level, the film would have been probably 15 minutes shorter. There are even long periods of silence between dialog that makes you wonder if the actors could even read and weren't being fed their lines through some hidden microphone.

It all starts some 60 miles outside of New York where a model rejects the seduction attempt of a married client. They are stopped for speeding and when he is told to go to New York to get the money to pay the fine, he is told to leave her behind. She is released when another speeder pays the $100, but a knock-out drug in her coffee leaves her as this sick pig's prisoner. He is behind a vice ring (which he refers to as "public relations"), and now his prisoner, she is threatened with being forced into becoming a drug addict in order to do his bidding. These characters are revolting, and even if that is what guides the world of film noir, it is told so repulsively here that it makes it very difficult to watch.

British character actor Ronald Long (as the heavy set man who entices the ingenue into his web) may have an impressive list of credits, but the direction keeps him from coming off as professional. I'd mention the actors names who play the main characters, but they are so bad that they don't really deserve to get any credit. Only Eileen Letchworth as one of the "public relations consultants" is of any name value, and that is for her later appearances on the daytime soaps in the late 60's and 70's. There really is never any suspense, only disgust, so even if the structure made the storyline interesting, it is totally destroyed by the cheap looking photography, wretched acting and horrible dialog. The whole set-up of the sleazy justice of the peace reminded me of the set-up of one of the worst comedies of the past twenty years, the horrifying "Nothing But Trouble" which even its name cast seems to hope to forget agreeing to be in.

A bizarre account from over the Atlantic

[searchanddestroy-1 · 23 December 2012]

A weird grade B picture. Yes weird, in the acting - very slow dialogues, like early Bela Lugosi features ! - only indoor sets, and such a way of filming. It reminds me also scifi films, as those directed by Richard Cunha and Roger Corman in the fifties. The story has been told in plot line above. It reminds me, for the first part, an Alfred Hitchcock Presents episode. Slow, very slow, but not uninteresting although. The score is laughable, when you ear it on the sequences shown in the same time.

I don't know the actors. A film from outer space in the film noir genre. I am not used to it. In sci fi yes, but not with crime movies.

If there were C-films...

[Goingbegging · 3/10 · 30 March 2021]

I'm not the only critic who was put in mind of Ed Wood with this bargain-basement effort about white slavery in what seems to be New Jersey. This is Ed without the defiant ebullience that somehow filtered through to the finished article, and turned his excruciating films into art-house classics. No such legend seems to attach to William (who?) Martin.

The plot starts out fairly well, with a married advertising man dining-out a young, unknown TV-model he has employed, on the assumption that she'll return the favour like a good girl. When she refuses, he reluctantly agrees to drive her home, but in his frustration, he accelerates away at twice the speed limit, only to get pulled in and escorted to the cop-shop. Lacking ready money, he has to find a bank, leaving her with the cops as security. Meanwhile another speeding offender (Wayne) takes pity on the model, and offers to pay the fine himself, so she can get home quicker with him - if she's willing, of course.

Not too believably, she agrees... and the next thing she remembers is waking up in a strange house, where her rescuer makes it clear that she's now a captive member of his 'public relations' group, just having to 'be nice to clients' in exchange for a (handsome) salary. As you may have guessed, drugs come into the picture in a big way.

We can't reveal much more, except to hint that small-town cops and prosecutors are not always immune to pressure from dodgy local business, and that Wayne's timely arrival may not have been the pure accident it looked like. But as usual, everything goes wrong before anything comes right.

I don't know whether the part of the model required a beauty of the first magnitude. Maybe not. Or maybe the budget just didn't stretch to one. Either way, the little-known Jeanne Rainer is only passably good-looking, and sounds particularly silly claiming to be only nineteen. Wayne is played by Ronald Long, an accomplished English actor who looks and sounds like Hitchcock merged with Charles Laughton, talking very 50's (with that mysterious 'n' in front of the 'yes'.) Otherwise the cast is quite forgettable, the elegant Eileen Letchworth making only a faint play at bunny-mother/wicked witch.

In 1959, I was a 12-year-old in a boys' boarding-school, and I think we would have been thoroughly titillated by this adult material, even though most of it was just talk. As for real adults, I cannot begin to imagine them paying good money at the box-office for The Naked Road.

Where Does Mike Vraney Keep Digging Up This Stuff?

[Scott_Mercer · 4/10 · 12 March 2013]

Just when you think every obscure low budget potboiler has been exhumed, here comes The Naked Road, more of a film noir than the usual softcore stuff that Something Weird Video seems to put out. No nudity, in fact even though this is roughie-type material, it's handled in a PG-rated manner. No nudity or even mild swearing. Could have almost been broadcast on television, even at that time.

I was reminded of nothing less than Ed Wood's The Sinister Urge. The quality of the sets was about the same (bare bones), the acting was actually a little bit better (heavy Ronald Long was a recognizable character actor throughout the next 15 years on a bevy of network TV shows), but the directing was just about as competent as Wood (static long shots, actors poorly used, except for Long, who probably did it all himself) but without EDW's lovable quirks or infectious enthusiasm for whatever overblown piece of underfunded crap he was pushing as the next Citizen Kane.

I'm sure whatever grindhouse or drive-in theater patrons that happened to accidentally watch this back in the day (probably last on the bill at 3:00 in the morning) were not overly impressed. A few chuckles here and there, but not worth seeking out.

Sensation? What sensation?

[Leofwine_draca · 3/10 · 29 November 2017]

THE NAKED ROAD is another late-stage 'sensation' movie of the kind that were so popular throughout the 1930s. This one is ostensibly about a young woman being kidnapped by slavers, but it looks and feels so tame and staid that the storyline feels more than a little preposterous. A risible budget leads to a single-location lounge setting and endless small-time chit-chat between two paper-thin leads. It feels very much like a TV movie and not at all controversial.

Promises Way More Than It Delivers

[boblipton · 4/10 · 19 September 2021]

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.

Off White Slavery

[amosduncan_2000 · 7/10 · 26 December 2012]

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.

A bad film in evey way

[research-seven-144-377528 · 2/10 · 21 August 2023]

Thia film has no redeeming features. The acting is terrible,the small rooms and sets are terrible,the script is terrible,the music is terrible,the plot is terrible,the main english actor is really terrible,.everthing about this film is terrible and really unbelieveable. Please do not be tempted to spend any time seeing,watching or thinking about Naked Road. This ntitle has no connection with the film in any way. The poster for the film is more iteresting than the film ans it illustrates a scene not shown in the film. Many people may snear at British films made at the same time as this U. S. A.film but none are never as bad as Naked Road.

Obvious low budget, sure, but...

[Delrvich · 8/10 · 19 January 2020]

I think that adds to the credibility of the movie. It's not like these kinds of sleazy things are exactly glamorous, indiscrete, provide a great health care plan, and a 401k.

Despite it's poor score, this cheap exploitation film is actually pretty good.

[planktonrules · 7/10 · 2 April 2021]

"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.