Who Killed Teddy Bear?

Joseph Cates's 1965 film is a New York thriller long left aside for going too far for its own moment. Norah, a disc jockey at a nightclub, starts receiving obscene phone calls, and the detective investigating has confused his fixation with the death of his own daughter and lost his professional distance. The stalker played by Sal Mineo is built through sexual obsession and trauma with a directness rare for the period. The film records Times Square as it was in the 1960s, the sex shops and the night life, almost like documentary, and those images are now the archive of a vanished city. The club manager played by Elaine Stritch is one of the few characters of the period openly implied to be a lesbian. Censorship constraints hampered distribution and for a long time only cut prints circulated. Who it's for: viewers interested in the borderline examples of 1960s American noir and in images of New York. Who it's not for: anyone avoiding content about sexual harassment, stalking and trauma, or troubled by the period's representation of mental illness.