Released in the USA as NAKED IN THE NIGHT, this film was advertised (and the VHS release still pushes this) as an "adults only" film, but except for three brief dance sequences (with pasties), it's mostly a crime film dealing with prostitution. As a crime film, it's quite good and well-acted by Eva Bartok and Sabine Sesselmann, the former as a lady trying to bust the racket, the latter as a sad victim of it. Heinz Drache, later in many German "krimi" films of the early 60's, does a fine job as a regular customer of the madam who isn't exactly what he seems. While the dubbing does not match the lips that well, the dubbed voices do a decent acting job and the dialogue is literate, so I had no problems with the post-synchronization. There is a fine Teutonic jazz score by Willy Mattes and moody, atmospheric photography. The credit sequence, with a speeding car careening down the street with the credits flying toward the screen, culminating in a car crash, started the film off with a bang, and the pace is kept up well throughout. In the late 1950's and the early 1960's, many foreign melodramas with a sexual element were marketed as "adults only" films in the USA. This brought a number of excellent films here that might not have gotten a US release otherwise, but gave the films the stigma of being tedious nudist or sex films, which many were not (thankfully, there are no American nude inserts here!). Despite the VHS cover NAKED IN THE NIGHT as a nudist or sex film, this is really a German crime film, and as such it's recommended to those who would want to see a Teutonic white slavery melodrama.
