WHO KILLED TEDDY BEAR? (1965) Blu-ray
Director: Joseph Cates
Network

Sal Mineo flexes to psychosis-breeding childhood trauma in the rarely-seen WHO KILLED TEDDY BEAR? on Blu-ray from Network.

Aspiring actress Norah Dain (Juliet Prowse, RUN FOR YOUR WIFE) goes to auditions by day and plays records by night at a discotheque run by Marian (TWO'S COMPANY's Elaine Stritch). Her brief periods of sleep are being disrupted by a series of disturbing phone calls from someone who claims to know where she is and what she is doing. When mute bouncer Carlo (HILL STREET BLUES' Daniel J. Travanti) is stabbed after he ejects a drunk customer (Rex Everhart, FRIDAY THE 13TH's truck driver) who comes on too strong to Norah, her causal mention of the obscene phone calls intrigues Lieutenant Dave Madden (Jan Murray, THUNDER ALLEY). Norah is at first reluctant to make a big deal out of the calls despite the warnings of Marian – whose concern seems less than motherly – she becomes terrified when someone leaves a decapitated teddy bear in her apartment. She accepts the hospitality of Madden, a widowed father who is the sole member of a task force on obscene callers and whose extensive study of criminal and aberrant sexuality even concerns his colleagues. As the caller continues to torment her, Norah even becomes as suspicious of potential love interest Madden as she is of Marian (and even mute Carlo), making her vulnerable to the attentions of boyishly handsome discotheque waiter Lawrence (Mineo) who cares for his nineteen-year-old sister Edie (Margot Bennett) whose development was arrested at the age in which she suffered an accident after witnessing an even that has also colored Lawrence's conflicted feelings about women.

Seemingly inspired more by Michael Powell's PEEPING TOM than Alfred Hitchcock's PSYCHO, WHO KILLED TEDDY BEAR? plays like a particularly seedy episode of the fifties series DECOY – in which MY THREE SONS' Beverly Garland played a female police officer whose weekly adventures brought scenarios involving obscene callers, rape, broken homes, and mental illness to audiences in a more unsparing fashion than the likes of later police series – or a "roughie" scenario cast and crewed by stage and television professionals (director Joseph Cates worked mainly in television including serving as executive producer on a couple annual broadcasts of the Tony Awards). Far more disturbing than the visualization of child sexual abuse that backgrounds the relationship between child-like Edie and Lawrence (who spends most of his time at home in his underwear humping his bed) is the home office of Madden which is festooned with abnormal psychology books, porno magazines, and salacious pulp paperbacks where he listens to recordings of women's accounts of their victimization by obscene callers which can be heard by his twelve-year-old daughter Pam (Diane Moore) in her bedroom at night (upon meeting Norah, she asks her father if the woman is a hooker). In spite of Norah's hysteria and Madden's hysterics, the film is strangely low key at times, with a murder seemingly thrown in with little subsequent mention of the character. Mineo is given little to work with, being there for sex appeal but giving his Actor's Studio best in scenes with stage actress Bennett who was married to Kier Dullea (BLACK CHRISTMAS) and the Malcolm McDowell and had a bit part in Lindsey Anderson's O LUCKY MAN! but mainly confined her career to Broadway. Indian-born Prowse provides exotic presence, but her characterization requires little more than her accent and terrorized expressions. Murray and Stritch fare best while poor Travanti is cast as a deaf mute. The supporting cast also includes Bruce Glover (CHINATOWN), Frank Campanella (PRETTY WOMAN), and K.C. Townsend as Pam's babysitter (she would later play the ill-fated hooker of THE BURNING). The film was the only feature credit of LOU GRANT creator Leon Tokatyan who co-wrote with comic book writer Arnold Drake (THE FLESH EATERS) who is still credited in the X-MEN franchise for characters he created freelancing for Marvel Comics in the late sixties.

Released theatrically by Magna Pictures – who gave us the DEAD EYES OF LONDON/THE GHOST double bill – WHO KILLED TEDDY BEAR? has not been available legitimately in the United States. The film was rejected by the BBFC in 1965 but first released on DVD in the UK in 2009 by Network in an okay fullscreen transfer of the shorter ninety-minute version that softened some of the film's frank talk about sexuality as well as some more overtly sexualized displays of Mineo writhing around in his bed (as described on Ken Anderson's blog Dreams Are What Le Cinema is For.... Unfortunately, this shorter version has persisted in Network's region free 1080p24 MPEG-4 AVC 1.66:1 Blu-ray which is nevertheless a visual improvement that give the film a professional gloss with better delineated light and shadow, as well as the revelation that even some shots that are not flashback or fantasy are soft because they have been Vaseline-filtered. The LPCM 2.0 mono track is clean, with dialogue and the score coming through, along with the Rita Dyson theme song and various discotheque songs (like the promiscuity-encouraging track "Toothbrush and Comb"). English SDH subtitles are also included.

All of the extras have been carried over from the DVD edition, starting with "The House Where He Lived" (48:03), a 1966 episode of the single season ITC series COURT MARTIAL about the American Judge Advocate General department operating in Britain during World War II starring Peter Graves and Bradford Dillman. In this utterly compelling episode, Mineo guest stars as American munitions expert Lieutenant Tony Bianchi operating for the Anglo-American group Minerva who assist foreign allies in battling the enemy in secret campaigns. When Bianchi, traveling with a group of Italian partisans lead by Giolitti (Frank Wolff, COLD EYES OF FEAR), insists that their operation to blowup a mountaintop monastery occupied by the German command will not work, Minerva commander Sergeant McCaskey (THE AVENGERS' Kenneth J. Warren) requests Major Frank Whitaker (Graves) to travel to Italy and either convince Bianchi to carry out the mission or bring him back for a court martial for cowardice. When the Germans attack their hideout, Bianchi shows his bravery but still refuses to carry out the mission, and Whitaker finds that he may have to defend Bianchi when Giolitti calls a court martial court with himself as judge. Also included is a 1967 high school scare titled LSD: INSIGHT OR INSANITY? (18:07) in which Mineo squarely narrates an essay on the dangers of this "groovy way of self-expression" (director Max Miller would direct MARIJUANA the following year with Sonny Bono as the onscreen narrator). Also included is a stills gallery (4:07) and the film's theatrical trailer (2:09). If the PDF of the original publicity and promotion brochure has been carried over from the DVD edition, then it requires a BD-ROM drive to access. (Eric Cotenas)

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