Scorsese's first feature film was already packed with the trademarks and themes that he'll be known for throughout his lengthy and prolific career – contemporary music, quick edits, slow-motions, machismo, male bonding, goddess-whore complex, faith and Catholic guilt. Playing the lead role is his long-time collaborator and friend, Harvey Keitel, alongside TV star Zina Bethune. This film also marks his first collaboration with film editor Thelma Schoonmaker, on what would become a historic partnership between the two, resulting into three Oscar trophies for Thelma. This early Scorsese black-and-white film is both inventive and ragged, influenced clearly by the famous French cinematic movement of the 60s and other films Scorsese adored while growing up. Originally titled as "I Call First" in 1967, Scorsese was asked to insert nude scenes in the film to get it more distribution and eventually called "Who's That Knocking at My Door" and advertised as some sort of sex exploitation film – though those spliced nude fantasy scenes were shot terrifically, if not reasonably. This may not be the best example of the director's work and style, but we can see here the genesis of his genius. A debut film worth a look.

I watched Mean Streets a few years ago (which is sort of intended as a sequel to this film) and hated it if I'm totally honest. However, I noticed this film on Sky Movies and seeing that it was a forerunner to Mean Streets I decided to check it out (hoping that it would be better than Mean Streets), but nope sadly it's just as bad....Like Mean Streets this film has a virtually non-existent plot which only seems to kick into a gear at past the 1 hour mark (by which point I was long past caring). Even when the plot is established (what little of it there is), Scorsese never really seems interested in his own story (many scenes are punctuated with inappropriate music and potentially powerful scenes are skimmed by or glossed over in favour of many members of the cast goofing around). In fact when watching this, I got the feeling that Scorsese was like an inexperienced teacher who was in charge of a bunch of unruly kids; he has no real control and just lets them do what they want. I felt that Scorsese's immaturity showed through far too often, but thankfully this is something that he grew out of in later life.Scorsese injects the film with pretentious dialogue and pop-culture references (John Wayne's name is mentioned every 30 seconds for about the first 30 minutes of the film). The uninteresting dialogue is evident throughout the running time, but now after watching films like Pulp Fiction (where Tarantino fuses pop-culture and snappy dialogue effortlessly) Scorsese's effort here seems weak in comparison (although it may have at least proved influential).The characters are barely developed, the romance between JR and the girl is trite and the one powerful moment in the film is barely explored and the religious allegory at the end seems to only exist to try to give the picture deeper meaning which it never really earns through the narrative. Like Mean Streets, Who's That Knocking At My Door is tonally confused and totally boring and even though it's only 85 minutes long it took an eternity to get to the end of the picture.As far as I'm concerned Scorsese's career began with Taxi Driver (a fascinating and involving film) and the likes of Mean Streets and Who's That Knocking At My Door are basically failed experiments from a man that would go on to improve his craft. If you're unfortunate enough to have already watched this film then I would suggest skipping Mean Streets and watching Taxi Driver which will showcase how great Scorsese can be.

I doubt very much that if both the director and the star had not gone on to very substantial careers Who's That Knocking At My Door would get too many viewings. But as cheap as it is, it does portend bigger things for Martin Scorsese and Harvey Keitel.Actually the biggest name associated with this project is Zina Bethune who already had a television series The Nurses to her credit at the time she was Keitel's co-star. The advice given writers is also given filmmakers, start with what you know. Scorsese sure knew Little Italy in Manhattan.Keitel is your typical kid from the hood, a lot like John Travolta in Saturday Night Fever who takes up with Zina Bethune. But later she confesses an incident in her past and Keitel reacts badly. Remember in Saturday Night Fever how Donna Pescow was treated after Travolta's pals had their way with her. Very similar here.Not sure why she opened her mouth other than Bethune wanted to keep things open and honest. Sometimes discretion is better than honesty.I did love the scene at the beginning where Keitel is actually Scorsese himself dissecting the film they had just seen which happened to be John Ford's The Searchers. That film hadn't achieved the status it has now so Scorsese was a prophet in that regard.I can't say this was a masterpiece, but it sure shows what potential the creator had.

I just finished watching Who's that knocking on my door on DVD and I thought the movie was pretty excellent for a first feature film that was directed and written by Martin Scorsese( one of my favorite film directors) before he became internationally famous.The movie is about this Italian-American J.R.(Harvey Kietel) who lives in New York City.He meets this girl (Zina Bethune) and when he gets into a relationship with her, she told him a secret that she once got raped by a man, and J.R. cannot stop struggling from the secret that she told him.I honestly thought both Harvey Kietel and Zina Bethune played great roles. The dialogue in the movie was pretty good for Marty's first flick.I especially liked the acting. I highly recommend that movie a must see for Martin Scorsese fans & movie lovers.I will definitely give the movie 10 out of 10 stars.I also think that it's definitely worth buying, as a matter of fact, they actually sell the movie on DVD for $3.00 at Big Lots.This movie is such a great American classic.