In 1965, my grandfather made a movie calledWho Killed Teddy Bear?It starred Sal Mineo as a crazed sexual predator who becomes obessed with Juliet Prowse's character. It's a great B movie and has its own little cult following of Sal Mineo fans and weirdo perverts. ALSO, Elaine Stritch plays Prowse's boss! What more could you ask for in a movie?! It's edgy, stylistic, and at times, bizarre. Sal Mineo is the ultimate flamer.Anthology is screening it twice this weekand you should come! I'm introducing the film before both screenings, one that starts at 7 PM, one at 9 PM this Friday (tomorrow, OR today if you are reading this tomorrow, obviously). Please come! I'm gonna talk a little about my grandfather, as well as some production stories of the film, and a speech he made about it at a Film Forum screening a few years before his death. No pre-sale tickets. Screening from the original 35mm print--no fancy-pants brand new Technicolor bullshit, but from one of the only original prints in existence. My grandfather was really cool. He also is responsible for castingThe Honeymooners. Art flippin' Carney and Gleason! Carney is God! Come! You'll have a blast. Try to make it out every-buddies! OWEN KLINE"[TEDDY BEAR is] preoccupied with voyeurism, masturbation, fetishism, lesbianism, rape, and all manner of psychosexual aberrations…. What the film may lack in explicitness, it more than makes up for in its murky morality. Here the motives of the 'hero' are repeatedly questioned, the 'villain' is portrayed in a remarkably sympathetic light, and our own act of viewing is shown to be every bit as double-edged as everyone else's, until finally the dream-like ending has innocence and depravity treading the same mean streets. … The film's sexual panic captures perfectly the mood between the repressive 1950s and the liberated 1970s – and for those with an interest incinema history, TEDDY BEAR represents an important missing link between, on the one hand, PEEPING TOM (1960), PSYCHO (1960), and the nascent Italian giallo genre, and on the other hand, BLACK CHRISTMAS (1974), TAXI DRIVER (1976), and the American slasher genre." – Anton Bitel, CHANNEL 4
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