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.

A long out of circulation cult film, Who Killed Teddy Bear is a kind of stepping stone between Hitchcock's excavation of the warped mind in psycho, with its final psychiatric classification of Norman Bates, and Martin Scorsese's Taxi Driver, with its disturbed lonely man lost amongst the newly permissive urban landscape.The primary focus of Joseph Cates' 1965 film is a sometime dancer and barmaid (Juliet Prowse) who has been receiving obscene and threatening phone calls from an unknown person. Yet as the case unfolds, the film becomes more intrigued by the characters surrounding her – the possibly lesbian manageress of the bar (Elaine Stritch), the investigating detective who is obsessed by abnormal psychologies (Jan Murray) and the disturbed busboy who turns out to be the caller (Sal Mineo). Each of the characters seems alone and immersed in the modern urban condition. Throughout the film, a preponderance of mirror shots (the "solving of the case even involves a mirror) suggests a world in which everyman and everywoman's sickness reflects everyone else's. The detective seems to have become so obsessed with his quarry that he almost crosses the line into psychosis himself, the manageress might have her own sexual agenda in wishing to help her victimized employee and each of them seems as much of a threat as the unknown caller. Prowse does not know who to trust, even whether to trust herself, and although the film descends into a "get the culprit" finale, even this traditional end fractures into a private turmoil lost in an alienating environment.The film offers a series of very strong character studies, all remarkably well acted, but often seems concerned to conjure the feel and sound of the times through montages to music, of dancing, working out and wandering, and its black and white footage cut to pop hits makes it seem like a greyscale Kenneth Anger at times. One of the montages involves Mineo drifting through the fleshpots, bookshops and cinema foyers of Times Square, an eerie presentiment of Travis Bickle. Mineo is particularly strong in the role of the tormented busboy, tortured on a rack between the unfettered expression of carnal nature he sees all around him (and has the potential for within) and the last psychotic jerks of a Puritan sexual consciousness. Mineo proves here what a remarkable actor Hollywood wasted when it underused him, and his physical presence – often showing his toned body in swimming trunks or flaunting his butt in the tightest of Chinos – suggests a missing link between mainstream Hollywood and underground stars like Warhol's Joe Dallesandro and Pink Narcissus' Bobby Kendall.Who Killed Teddy Bear isn't a perfect film – there's something missing structurally and a tendency towards melodrama – but its picture of a world fallen from a childhood Eden into an adulthood of sticky and strange sexual dramas, it was way ahead of its time and still stands head and shoulders above most of the so-called sophisticated cinema of today.

'Who Killed Teddy Bear' is far better than its kitschy-exploitation reputation would suggest. The script is admittedly pretty bad, with some terrible dialogue, and some of the more clichéd 'swinging-sixties' scenes are laughable to modern audiences. However, the relatively frank discussion of psycho-sexual deviancy, excellent performances from Mineo and Stritch, and striking cinéma vérité photography, lift the movie well above the drive-in norm. Taking visual cues and a raucous jazz score from French New Wave, and predating the Times Square Sleaze of 'Midnight Cowboy' and 'Taxi Driver' by several years, 'Who Killed Teddy Bear' is a thoroughly bizarre time capsule offering both a rare and fascinating glimpse into the sleazy porno subculture of sixties New York and an early cinematic attempt to provide a psychological motivation for mental instability.A movie well worth seeking out that captures a disturbing time and place that is genuinely lost forever.

This film is truly a work of art of the highest magnitude and no, I am not kidding. Shot in glorious, high-contrast black-and-white, it reeks of exploitation from the note of the cheesy theme song all the way through the strobe-cut ending and every horn-blaring, high-heeling, hip-grinding moment in between. Sal Mineo plays a busboy obsessed with aspiring actress/club DJ Juliet Prowse (and Prowse is at her foxiest in this one, with her pencil skirts, kitten heels and cat eyes), coming off like a perverted puppy dog.The obscene phone call bits--all heavy breathing, bulging tighty whiteys and sweat--will make you want to leave the theatre and take a shower. Or, if that isn't nasty enough for you, how about the scene with bulldyke Elaine Stritch fondling Prowse's fur (so to speak), or the retarded kid sister locked in the closet or the policeman obsessively playing audio tapes of various twisted criminal's confessions as his daughter listens wide-eyed from the other side of the door? Or how about the "twist lesson" that brings the film to it's climax (no pun intended)? Another asset of this great piece of cinema are its New York City location shots, especially when Mineo goes walking the city at night, looking for filth in scenes that must've influenced "Taxi Driver" (also love the W.S. Burroughs titles in the window of the "dirty bookshop"). I cannot recommend this movie highly enough. It's not available on video (Curses!), so if it's ever screened at the theater or on TV in your area, be there.