Movie Time: Who Killed Teddy Bear?

So the countdown to Halloween is now measured in days.

7 days to go.

I did get the Halloween decorations up last week, if you count looking like a discount Mexican restaurant as Halloween decor.

We're still cycling through a series of movies of questionable quality. Today's movie is more of a crime drama than a horror film but I've watched this thing and I was horrified.

It's... Movie Time! 

The film for today's post is from 1965 and is called Who Killed Teddy Bear? This movie is about a young woman in New York City  just trying to live her life but damn if she doesn't have to contend with a sicko stalker who is terrorizing the city as a sex murderer.  

There's no nudity but the movie is a hot bed of taboo topics such as pornography, voyeurism, incest, and lesbianism. 

A lot of Who Killed Teddy Bear? was shot on location, providing a film document of Times Square and 42nd Street in a era of seedy and decrepit decline.

Norah Dain is trying to make the best of it in NYC as a nightclub disc jockey and aspiring actress living alone.  She's got her own apartment in Manhattan apartment so she's doing OK. Life could be better but it could also be worse.

And get worse it does when the obscene phone calls start. The creepy caller knows things about her, details he could only know if he was watching her everyday.  

When Norah finds a  decapitated teddy bear in her apartment, well, that's just one damn thing too many and she calls the cops.

Police detective Lt. Dave Madden is on the case.

Norah has trouble feeling assured. Lt. Dave is kind of weird.

Here's how Lt. Dave Madden goes about his work:

• secretly recording his discussions with Norah
• listening to tapes of Norah and other women talking about obscene phone calls
• obsessively studying pornography and the behavior of sex perverts

He does all this at home within earshot of his 10 year old daughter and quite frankly, that is SO wrong and just plain weird.

Lt. Dave Madden's superiors at work are concerned about how he conducts himself.

Hey! Could Lt. Dave Madden himself be Norah's obscene phone caller?  Wouldn't that be quite the plot twist, eh?

But he's not.

The filmmakers helpfully move that element of suspicion away from our disturbing detective and show us who the real caller is.

The obscene caller is seen to be Lawrence Sherman, a waiter at the nightclub where Norah works. 

Lawrence lives with and cares for his 19-year-old sister Edie, who is brain damaged and has the mind of a child. 

When she was a little girl, Edie suffered brain damage in a fall down the stairs while running away from seeing Lawrence having sex with an older woman.  

The story implies the older woman was their mother. Ewww! 

Lawrence is unable to have a normal romantic or sexual relationship due to his guilt over the accident and his duty to look after Edie following the death of their parents. 

Edie might have the child but she's in the body of a sexually maturing adolescent. Edie starts dressing a like an adult woman with high heels and makeup.  And she's flirting with Lawrence and... Double ewww!  Which Lawrence finds... frustrating?

OMG! What is this movie I've stumbled on to? Look, just because it's on TCM doesn't mean I have to watch this damn thing. 

But I've made it this far. 

Lawrence looks for outlets to relieve his... frustration.

• Visiting adult bookstores
• Pornographic movies 
• Making obscene calls to Norah

Norah is oblivious to all this back story. The Lawrence she knows from the nightclub seems like a nice of guy. She's friendly towards him, maybe even attracted to him. 

But the calls continue and Norah is very worried.  

Marian Freeman, the nightclub manager of the nightclub takes a personal interest in Norah and tries to advise and protect her. She offers to stay overnight with Norah at her apartment so Norah will not be alone and afraid. 

A kind gesture that goes awry when Norah thinks Marian is a lesbian and attempting to seduce her.  Norah demands for Marian to leave.  

Walking down the street alone in a coat she borrowed from Norah, Marian is attacked by Lawrence who kills her.

The next night after the nightclub closes, Lawrence attacks and sexually assaults Norah.  

Lt. Madden arrives before Lawrence can kill Norah. Madden beats the crap out of Lawrence then (inexplicably) allows him to leave the club.

While running through the traffic of Times Square, Lawrence imagines he's running through Central Park towards a smiling Norah.

Police officers pursue Lawrence and shoot him dead and the movie ends and does our misery.

WHAT the UNHOLY HELL was that?  

The co-writer of the screenplay was Arnold Drake with a long career writing comics like Doom Patrol, Deadman, Phantom Stranger and Guardians of the Galaxy. He also wrote one of the first graphic novels, It Rhymes With Lust, that was illustrated by Matt Baker and may offer some insight of how he came to this movie.  

Sal Mineo who played Lawrence attains a couple of milestones in American cinema.

• First man in an American movie to simulate masturbation
• First man in an American movie to appear in jockey shorts.

Who Killed Teddy Bear? was not well received.

• Leonard Maltin called the film "sleazy" and "a waste of talent".
• The British Board of Film Classification refused to certify the film for release in the U.K.  
• The Catholic Church called for a boycott of the film.

If you want to get more high minded in assessing this movie, Anton Bitel wrote: "The film’s sexual panic captures perfectly the mood between the repressive 1950s and the liberated 1970s."  

For some reason I do not understand, the film holds a 100% rating on Rotten Tomatoes based on six reviews.

An Ultra HD Blu-ray release of Who Killed Teddy Bear? was announced in 2024.  

I found Who Killed Teddy Bear? to be repulsive and disturbing but to be fair, I think that's the whole idea. But it's oppressive atmosphere is unrelenting.  Poor Norah is just trying to keep her head down and get on her with life and all she gets for her trouble is unwanted attention. 

Norah was played by Juliet Prowse, an actor and dancer principally known for much lighter fare.   

All I knew about Juliet Prowse when I was younger was her ubiquitous presence in L'eggs Pantyhose ads in the TV Guide.

God yes, Juliet! I HATE wrinkles around my ankles! 

Tomorrow: Star Trekking!

Next Saturday: It's Halloween and the absolutely WORST movie we've covered this month.