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| Sal Mineo in Who Killed Teddy Bear |
Cast: Sal Mineo, Juliet Prowse, Jan Murray, Elaine Stritch, Margot Bennett, Daniel J. Travanti, Diane Moore, Frank Campanella. Screenplay: Leon Tokatyan, Arnold Drake. Cinematography: Joseph C. Brun. Art direction: Hank Aldrich. Film editing: Angelo Ross. Music: Charles Calello.
Who Killed Teddy Bear is about kinks, and it has one of its own: the fetishization of Sal Mineo's body. The film takes every opportunity to explore it, showing the actor in his underwear or swim suit whenever possible. But this is only one of the peculiarities of a very odd film that falls somewhere between exploitation flick and serious exploration of a culture, that of New York City, poised between the repressions of the 1950s and the frenzy of the 1970s. Mineo plays Larry Sherman, who lives with his sister (Margot Bennett), mentally handicapped since a trauma that occurred when she was a child. He works as a busboy in a discotheque -- not one of the mirror-balled hothouses of the next decade, but a well-lighted place that looks like a suburban rec room. Juliet Prowse plays Norah, a DJ at the club, which is managed by the tough-talking Marian (Elaine Stritch). When Norah starts getting creepy phone calls, she contacts the police, and Lt. Dave Madden (Jan Murray) takes charge of the case. Madden is obsessed with sex crimes, and in his off time he studies his extensive collection of literature on the subject and listens to tapes of the victims he has interviewed, undisturbed that his 10-year-old daughter can also hear them. Norah is at first grateful for Madden's help, but eventually repulsed by his obsessions. Unfortunately, neither director Joseph Cates nor screenwriters Leon Tokatyan and Arnold Drake seem to know what to do with this assortment of characters and what might have been a solid thriller veers off into incoherence.
