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?

"You poke that finger at that dial mister, and that's when I start screaming rape!" I usually find bad acting and poor performances boring to watch and frustrating to subject myself to, but Ann-Margret's performance in "Kitten With A Whip" is so kinetically awful that she virtually invents a whole new kind of awfulness.As Jody Dvorak, the wildly unbalanced kitten of the title, Ann-Margret affects the line readings, attitudes and camp posturings that most drag queens can only dream about. It's a strangely compelling performance because it's like one given by a person who's never seen acting before. If you've ever seen Katherine O'Hara's Lola Heatherton character on "SCTV," you get a pretty good idea of Ann-Margret's brand of naturalism.The film is so overheated that it defies being taken seriously, so much of it comes off like a comedy of errors that befall the woodenly sincere John Forsythe as he attempts to extricate himself from the spiraling mess his life has become since crossing paths with Jody.The film is so undistinguished that everybody involved should be indebted to Ann-Margret. She is terrible, to be sure, but she is the only life the film has and is endlessly watchable. She gives even the most innocuous lines megatons of energy…so much that she's almost too much for the screen. That her career actually survived this delectable mess and she went on to become a rather nuanced actress in later years should give hope to lousy young actresses everywhere."Kitten With A Whip" is not only a treat for the eyes (Ann-Margret looks as good as her acting is bad) but for the ears as well. There is so much 60's bop talk that you might need subtitles. My favorite line (among many) : "You musclehead! How come you think you're such a smoky something when you're so nothing painted blue?" Has to be seen to be believed. Now cool it you creep, and coexist!

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."

I watched this movie as an MST3K and actually found it fairly engrossing. True, it was lacking in a few areas, but for an MST3K, it was astonishing. Personally, I would've directed more sexual tension between the senator and Jody ... and made the ending a little less pat ... more ambiguous. This movie is a perfect candidate to be remade.