Lurid, teenage delinquent dramas were hugely popular in the fifties and sixties, with many exploitation films filling drive-ins and theatres. The big studios got in the act with the likes of Kitten with a Whip.
Promising senatorial candidate David (John Forsythe) arrives home to find a strange woman, Jody (Ann-Margaret) sleeping in his daughter’s bed. Thinking she has been sent by his opponents to discredit him, he attempts to throw her out. However, she spins him a tale of running away from an abusive family and he relents, even buying her new clothes and paying for a ticket to stay with her ‘aunt’. His good nature is repaid with violence when Jody not only returns but invites her equally lawless friends along.
Kitten with a Whip is a prime example of a major studio doing exploitation as well as the indies. It’s as lurid as you’d hope and features some fabulous set pieces, not least when the action relocates to Mexico. Forsythe is the perfect, respectable straight guy, whose kindness and willingness to help are used against him. He’s a moral man who, despite having marriage troubles (his wife and child are ‘away’, no doubt planning to leave him) is never tempted by the saucy minx who is manipulating him. Ann-Margaret, although early in her career is superb, forever teetering on the edge of psychopathy.
Presented in stark black and white, it would make an interesting double bill with Russ Meyer’s Faster Pussycat! Kill! Kill! (1965), and although Ann-Margaret’s Jody may not be as physical as Tura Suntana’s Varla but would certainly hold her own in that particular gang.
Australian label Imprint has released the film with a host of great extras that put the film in the context of the Hollywood system at the time. A video essay by Kat Ellinger covers delinquent cinema in general and is informative and entertaining. It’s a welcome release for a film that is all but forgotten outside of fans of cult movies.
