Her, not me

Having blogged for 17 years now, I've obviously seen quite a few old movies. But it's still not uncommon for TCM to show an older movie that I haven't even heard of, let alone seen. One such example showed up several months back: Kiss Her Goodbye. Since I hadn't heard of it before and the synopsis sounded reasonably interesting, I recorded it and recently sat down to watch it.

Steven Hill, later of Law and Order, is one of the stars here. He plays a man named Ed Wilson, and ss the movie opens, he's in Florida driving down the coast with his young and clearly nubile sister Emily (Sharon Farrell, credited here as Sharon Forsmo). The car breaks down and, since this is the late 1950s and the relative middle of nowhere, it's out of the car and walk to civilization. They're rescued, such as it is, by farmer driving a horse-drawn cart, Kenny Grimes (Andrew Prine), who takes them into town.

In town they're taken to the sort of cabin-motel like the one in Niagara, run by Marge Carson (Elaine Stritch) and her father-in-law; they put the pair up. Ed meets with the owner of the local garage, Corey (Gene Lyons), and offers to do extra mechanic work on the side if he can use Corey's tools to fix his cars himself. In any case, Ed and Emily are going to have to stay here for a little problem, and that presents problems.

Those problems are largely down to Emily. She's growing into a woman, but she doesn't seem to realize it, and still seems to have the mind of a child. Worse, the pair's parents died in a car accident some years back, so there's nobody to take care of Emily and institutionalization is clearly not what Ed wants, considering that the institutions of the day were like. But because of Emily's sex appeal, all the young men in the area are basically into her, while she doesn't get this or even want the attention.

But this isn't the only issue Emily has, as she tries to take Marge's baby when the baby is crying while Marge is working and the baby's grandfather who is supposed to be looking after the kid is nowhere to be found. Now, you'd think that taking this baby all the way to the coast would be something that gets her on the radar of the local police and Ed and Emily getting politely asked to leave town, but no. That's largely because Marge is a widow herself and finding herself falling in love with Ed. The men keep coming after Emily, and that's going to lead to the climax of the movie, which isn't all that difficult to guess.

Kiss Her Goodbye is the sort of movie where I liked the idea behind it, but didn't particularly care for the execution. I think that's because the movie seems to be gong for a lurid vibe, almost like an exploitation movie, and that's not what the material needs. If Emily were an open temptress who knew what she's doing, then lurid might work. But Emily as presented is a tragic victim.

As a result, Kiss Her Goodbye as a moderately interesting misfire that's worth one watch although it isn't anything quite great.