Kiss Me Deadly (1955) Online

Kiss Me Deadly is an absolute joy to watch. There are no big-name stars, the director has never been mentioned in the same breath as a Hitchcock or Huston, and it's basically a simple Mickey Spillane story. How its presented on the screen is the genius of the picture. Right from the opening credit sequence, you know you're in for something fresh and innovative. This is a must see for fans of Quentin Tarantino, and there is a curious box containing a certain substance that glows when opened (Pulp Fiction, anyone?). It is one of the finest of the "film noir" genre, predominantly because of the moody black and white photography and its amazing 'timeless' appeal (I would rank it alongside Touch of Evil). It's great to know the film has been "rediscovered", and be sure to see a copy of the film containing 2 different versions of the mind-boggling final sequence shot at the time.

Sleazy, tawdry B-noir doesn't get any sleazier or tawdrier than Robert Aldrich's jazzy and astonishingly entertaining "Kiss Me Deadly." This film was released late in the life cycle of the film noir genre. By 1958 and Orson Welles' "Touch of Evil," true noir would be just about washed up. Any noir film from that point forward would be self-consciously aware that it was tipping its hat to an established genre. But "Deadly" came out when films still didn't have to work at being noirish---they just WERE, and dazzlingly so.

Born-to-play-a-bully Ralph Meeker plays tough-guy detective Mike Hammer, who's in the wrong place at the wrong time and picks up a mysterious panic-stricken girl (Cloris Leachman), who's just escaped from an asylum. From that moment forward, he finds himself tangled up in a barely lucid plot, in which a bunch of baddies want to get their hands on something the girl either had or knew about. Hammer doesn't know what it is, but he knows that if so many people want it, it's something he probably wants too, and the race for the great "whatsit" is on.

If you wanted to teach a film class about the look and attitude of a film noir, you couldn't pick a better film than this one. I found myself on a recent viewing of this film pausing my DVD player and studying the frame (because, sadly, this is what I do in my spare time), rehearsing in my mind what I would tell a class about any particular composition. And aside from the style, the film is steeped in noir sentiment--it's not simply cynical, like the glossier studio noirs of the 40's; it's downright apocryphal. It's not simply one man undone by the vengeful forces of fate here, but an entire civilization on the brink of extinction.

So pop this in and have a great time with it--feel free to quote it liberally, as there are plenty of juicy lines worth quoting. But as you watch it, you might want to stay away from the windows, for as Mike Hammer's hot-to-trot sometime girlfriend, sometime secretary Velda says, someone may "blow you a kiss."

Grade: A+

'Kiss Me Deadly' is an overlooked crime gem that has proved to be a major influence on subsequent film makers from the French New Wave to cult classics 'Repo Man' and 'Pulp Fiction'. It's a movie which gets better and better with age. Director Robert Aldrich manages to put lots of style and interesting touches which sometimes border on the surreal into this toughest of tough guy movies. Ralph Meeker ('Paths Of Glory', 'The Dirty Dozen', 'The Anderson Tapes') is well cast as Mickey Spillane's Mike Hammer. Meeker's Hammer is brutal and his performance really makes this one work. The supporting cast are all very good too, especially Albert Dekker ('The Wild Bunch') as Dr Soberin and Maxine Cooper as Hammer's "assistant" Velda. Also keep an eye out for the debut of Cloris Leachman is the striking opening sequence. The "great whatsit" which Hammer searches for is one of the great movie gimmicks, and the ending will blow you away - literally. I loved this movie from beginning to end. I think it ranks alongside 'Out Of The Past' (Tourneur), 'The Asphalt Jungle' (Huston), 'Double Indemnity' (Wilder), 'The Killing' (Kubrick) and 'The Killers (Siegel)' as one of the greatest and most influential American crime movies, and I'm sure Scorcese and Tarantino would be the first to agree. Highly recommended.

"Kiss Me Deadly" had few similarities with Spillane's story about a gang of dope traffickers… Instead Aldrich reworks the plot so that the criminals are mixed up in the theft of priceless and high1y dangerous radioactive material which they are planning to smuggle to an unnamed power… The complicated story begins with Hammer picking up a scared girl on a lonely road at night and continues through the girl's subsequent death, a kidnapping and a series of very brutal killings…

Spillane's Mike Hammer remains the ultimate in violent private eyes… The killings seem to matter less than the sadism… One scene in which Hammer deliberately breaks the irreplaceable records of an Italian opera lover in order to get the information he wants is more repellent than any of the murders in the film…

Furious but stylish, "Kiss Me Deadly" is a film of great power and stays unique for its mixing of art and pulp fiction…

Man, I saw this movie for the first time a few years ago and I still don't know what to think about it. Ralph Meeker as a fascistic Mike Hammer, a crazy hitch-hiker, an opera fan and a box that can destroy the world. I dunno.

From what I understand Alderitch (the director) hated Mikey Spillane's story (which was about a briefcase full of drugs or money or something else), thought Mike Hammer was an image of brutality and fascism and made a film that reflected it. He makes Hammer out to be some kind of sadist and makes the suitcase out be some kind of nuclear device. The movie turns from a simple detective story to some wierd-ass, sci-fi cold war parable.

It's sort of like the X-Files meets film-noir PI, or something to that effect.

All that being said, this is a GREAT film and is well worth watching by anyone who like apocalyptic film-noir (in fact, this may be the only film in that sub-genre). Anyone who is a fan of bizarre camera work, weird symbolism and a stranger storyline, should really check this out.

Observe the many bizarre inconsistencies (clocks that jump ahead and back, screams that don't jibe right with the soundtrack, camera angles that jump mysteriously) and keep in mind that these were INTENDED! When you get a feel for this film and start noticing what the director was attempting to do with this bizarre film I think that you will enjoy it even more. Truly a unique piece of film making.

Robert Aldrich was a no-nonsense film director. When he undertook the direction of this film, little did he know it was going to become the extraordinary movie it turned out to be. The fame seems to have come by its discovery in France, as it usually is the case. Based on Mickey Spillane's novel and adapted by Al Bezzerides, the movie has an unique style and it's recommended viewing for fans of the film noir genre.

Right from the start, the film gets our imagination as we watch a young woman running along a California highway. That sequence proved Mr. Aldrich's ability to convey the idea of a disturbed young woman that seems to have escaped from a mental institution. The plot complicates itself as Hammer learns that Christine, the young woman, has died. He decides to investigate, which is what he does best.

Some excellent comments have been submitted to this forum, so we will not even try to expand in the action but will only emphasize in the tremendous visual style Mr. Aldrich added to the film, which seems to be its main attraction. For a fifty year old film, it still has a crisp look to it thanks to the impressive black and white cinematography of Ernest Lazlo, who had a keen eye to show us Hammer's world as he makes it come alive. The great musical score by Frank DeVol fits perfectly with the atmosphere of the L.A. of the fifties.

Ralph Meeker made an excellent contribution as Mike Hammer. He dominates the film with his presence. Albert Decker, Paul Stewart, Miriam Carr, Maxine Cooper, Fortuno Bonanova, and especially Cloris Leachman, in her screen debut, make this film the favorite it has become.

Fans of the genre can thank Mr. Aldrich for making a film that didn't pretend to be anything, yet has stayed as a favorite all these years.

If The Maltese Falcon (1941) was the definitive true detective movie, The Big Sleep (1946) the definitive glamourized detective movie, and Chinatown (1974) the definitive allegorical detective movie, then Kiss Me Deadly is the definitive sleazy detective movie.

Mickey Spillane's sadistic private eye Mike Hammer, turned from successful private eye to sleazy bedroom dick, is the quintessential anti-hero, doing just about anything and everything wrong to get a piece of the pie that the characters call "The Big What's-it."

The movie survives by giving the usual Spillane buckets-of-blood story and its protagonist new dimensions. Right from the electric opening scene and the audacious opening credit sequence, the audience is drawn into Hammer's seedy world, where morality is suspended, and the credo of the end justifying the means dominates Hammer's actions. His reckless abandonment is almost never questionned and the film seems to understand his brutality as what he must do to get the job done in an equally brutal world.

Director Robert Aldrich observes all of it with an objective eye that neither glorifies nor condemns the action on-screen, letting the audience draw its own conclusions--even where the plot is concerned. The pace is unrelentless and the plot turns are never fully explained, forcing the audience to participate willingly in all that Hammer does to, hopefully, see the story through to its ending.

And what an ending! I'd de damned to a special place in Hell if I elaborated, so I'll just say that it's one of the greatest I've ever seen. That goes same for the movie itself, which is one of the most stylish, jarring and truly entertaining movies of its genre.

Mike Hammer (played flawlessly by Meeker) gets shoved off a cliff, wrecked, set on fire, slugged (several times), blackjacked, attacked with a switchblade, tied up, drugged, burned by radiation and shot in the stomach. On the other hand he savagely bitch slaps a bunch of folks, blows off frequent come-ons from several women, mostly very attractive (well, it appears that he blows them off), and is still breathing (barely) at the end. This is an ultimate "B" movie that's fortunately just been featured by TCM - low budget, great characters, nice street scenes, semi-cheesy dialogue, everybody's a little shady even the stars. The plot never lets up leading to a truly bizarre and memorable climax. For what this movie tries to do it is right on target, which is all you can ever really ask. That's Wesley Addy, overworked and destined to give the wrong anesthetic to the poor victim in "The Verdict" nearly thirty years later, playing the obnoxious police detective in this one.

This late entry into the film noir genre has some harsh and memorable scenes and an ending unlike any other film noir. Of course, most of those weren't made during the A-Bomb scares of the mid 1950s, as this was.

The movie features a tough, no-nonsense Mike Hammer-like private eye, played well by Ralph Meeker, whose tough-guy dialog is a little dated but still fun to hear. This is one of those noirs in which everyone is a tough-talking, tough-acting mug and one never knows who to trust. Except for Cloris Leachman, who is only in the first quick (but haunting) opening scene, the females in here are unfamiliar actresses but people with interesting faces and personalities.

That opening with Leachman is a real attention-grabber and is one of the best starts I've ever seen in a crime movie. It's very creepy, as is the unique ending. I also appreciated the cinematography in here a lot more once the DVD was issued.

By 1950s standards this film is totally cutting edge. Just off the top of my head here is a list of things in this film that were VERY uncommon in the 50s: 1. African-Americans and non-Americans in several supporting roles 2. Main character has an answering machine (yes it's a giant wall-mounted reel-to-reel, but still..) 3. Location shooting (lots of exteriors and cool cars) 4. Risqué shots of bare legs, sexy actions by female characters, etc. It's implied the characters have a sex life (in most 1950s movies no one had sex EVER). 5. Violence - OK - there is no GRAPHIC violence, but lots of implied violence. Some of the camera angles are quite modern and unusual (punches into the camera, walking into camera to end scene, female character stepping over male characters outstretched legs, etc.) Censorship of EVERYTHING was the norm in the 50s. I don't know how this one made it past the censors but I'm glad it did - it's a quirky gem for film noir fans LK

Great movies can be made cheaply if they have good stories, casts and everything jells. This movie is an example. I would disagree with a previous comment that Robert Aldrich was an unknown Director. This was his first movie as a Director, but he was was on the fast track to becoming one of the best.

Ralph Meeker who plays the lead, was never in the first tier of leading men, but personally one of my favorite "wise guys" who could compete with Bogart's Sam Spade.

Meeker was physically more intimidating than Bogar tor any of the other tough guys of the film noire era with the exception of Robert Mitchum. Meeker was not one dimensional. In Paths of Glory, Kirk Douglas defends an innocent enlisted man picked to die as an "example" to maintain discipline. It was Meeker's role in this great film that convinced me that he deserved greater critical acclaim.

Meeker is a perfect Micky Spillane. He's tough, irreverent, and a convincingly shady character out for number one, who uses his girlfriend/secretary in his private eye business like a pimp uses a prostitute. Alas movie fans, the heart of the private eye business is the divorce industry. Tawdry, boring and predictable, its a wonder so many films have glamourized the business. The exceptional facet of this film is the use of nuclear device as the object of everyone's affection. I believe its a first. Today's viewers may be a little jaded on that subject, but when this movie was first shown, it was a novelty. Today's viewer will have to excuse Spillanes's ignorance. Money, drugs jewels and possibly blackmail material could be hidden in a box, but after the Atom Bomb, detectives had to add nuclear material to their inventory. Ralph Dekker who plays Spillane's ultimate enemy plays a small part unless you count his blue suede shoes. ( I wonder if that was the incentive for Elvis's first hits?) Dekker was in a lot of films, usually as a bad guy with a lot of first line actors like John Wayne and Burt Lancaster. Gloris Leachman plays the opening of the movie and her career. Their are several other notable character actors with familiar faces but forgetful names who add color to this colorful movie in black and white shot in 6 weeks.

If you enjoy action-adventure without political messages, watch this movie. If you want to see what men in the 50's wanted to drive, watch this movie. And just to show us that Spillane has a heart, you can watch him save his girl after being shot by a .38. What a tough guy!

A I Bezzerides' screen adaptation of Mickey Spillane's "Kiss Me Deadly" used an inspired combination of familiar and contemporary elements in order to create an exceptionally powerful and compelling thriller. A private detective engaged in a complicated investigation, hard boiled dialogue, a duplicitous woman and ruthless criminals are all typical film noir components but these are also augmented by some mid-1950s new technology such as the telephone answering machine and a "MacGuffin" which is symbolic of the major fear/threat which preoccupied people at the time when the movie was made. With its riveting opening sequence, a twisting plot and a sensational conclusion, it's easy to see how this low budget offering grew to be considered a film noir classic.

Director Robert Aldrich and cinematographer Ernest Laszlo combine brilliantly to provide the many well composed scenes which complement the plot's dark cynicism so effectively. A variety of unusual and interesting camera angles, powerful close-ups and slanted perspectives all contribute to the unsettling atmosphere. The overall sense of disorientation which these techniques induce is also further enhanced by the opening credits which roll in the wrong direction.

Private detective Mike Hammer (Ralph Meeker) is driving along the highway one night when a woman dressed only in a trench coat stops him and he grudgingly agrees to take her to the nearest bus stop. She tells him that she's just escaped from the local "laughing house" where she was being held as a prisoner. When they stop at a filling station, the woman named Christina (Cloris Leachman) gives the attendant a letter to mail and when she gets back in the car asks Mike to remember her if, for any reason, she doesn't make it safely to the bus stop. Shortly after, the couple are attacked, Mike is knocked unconscious and Christina is cruelly tortured and dies. Her body and the still unconscious Mike are then put into his car which the unknown attackers push off a cliff.

Later, Mike wakes up in hospital and when he's fit to leave is questioned by federal agents. They quiz him about Christina but being instinctively uncooperative, he tells them nothing. After being released, Mike decides to investigate the matter himself.

Christina had told Mike that she was named after the poet Christina Rossetti and during his investigation Mike visits Christina's home and sees a book of Rossetti's poems which he takes away with him. He discovers that the letter that Christina had sent from the filling station had been sent to him and simply said "Remember Me". After locating Christina's frightened roommate Lily Carver (Gaby Rodgers), he takes her back to his place and together they try to deduce the meaning of Christina's message. The clue they need is discovered in one of Rossetti's poems and this leads to the discovery of a key which in turn leads them to a metal box in a locker at the Hollywood Athletic Club. Mike opens it and is shocked to see that it contains a brightly glowing substance which burns his wrist. He immediately closes the box and returns it to the locker.

Mike returns to his car to find that Lily has disappeared and after getting in touch with his police contact Lieutenant Pat Murphy (Wesley Addy) learns that the real Lily's dead body had been found some time ago. Pat sees the burn on Mike's wrist and utters the words "Manhattan Project, Los Alamos, Trinity". Mike recognising that he's unable to cope with this type of investigation responds by passing the key to Pat.

Lily's impostor (Gabrielle) steals the box from the HAC locker and takes it to her boss at a beach house. However, a disagreement between them leads to a sequence of events which culminate in the film's spectacularly violent ending.

"Kiss Me Deadly" contained an extraordinary amount of violence for the time in which it was made. As well as Christina being tortured with pliers and killed, one of Mike's friends is crushed to death by a car when the jack that was supporting it is released and a criminal who was already tied up is stabbed to death. Mike is beaten up, shot, knocked unconscious and tied up on more then one occasion and also dishes out a few beatings. Numerous other characters also suffer violent deaths. A couple of other incidents also highlight Mike's sadistic streak. On one occasion, he beats up a guy who'd been tailing him by repeatedly banging his head against a wall before propelling him down a very long series of stone steps. On another occasion, when a corrupt doctor tries to extort too much money from him, Mike traps the man's fingers in a drawer and repeatedly crushes them with extreme force. After both of these incidents, the expressions on Mike's face convey the level of pleasure that he derives from this type of brutality.

Mike Hammer is depicted as a deplorable thug whose normal line of business involves blackmailing adulterous couples after they've been caught in compromising situations which he sets up. During his car journey with Christina, she accurately summed him up as a person who only thinks of himself and his possessions and who, in relationships, never gives, only takes. His motivation in pursuing the investigation was purely selfish because he thought that the involvement of so many people in the events surrounding Christina's death must mean that there had to be something very valuable that they were all chasing.

Meeker is particularly good as the unlikable Hammer but the performances by the entire cast are also remarkably strong.

So the big what'sit is what it's all about and this big what'sit is without a doubt, flat out phenomenal. Ralph Meeker snarls and sneers his way thru a bevy of sadism and selfishness in this superb, unflinching look at amorality beneath happy go lucky 50's sensibilities. Biting and wicked and never dull, and filled with more amazing characters than one movie deserves, this is a knock out classic that you will enjoy wallowing in repeatedly.

Kiss Me Deadly starts out better than virtually any movie made in the 1950's--- Cloris Leachman is running down a deserted street barefoot in a trench coat and nearly creamed by Mike Hammer in his Jaguar. Then the film descends into a series of hits and misses--- the raw noir look is the glue that holds an increasingly audaciously convoluted plot together. Spillane's plot is on par with the worst Ramond Chandler film adaptation, so all you can do is watch it with your brain disengaged. That said, it has several nice touches: I love Hammer's ability to slide into some of the most awesome cars available in 1955 (the wrecked--ouch!-- Jag is swapped out for a ultra-cool black Corvette). The under-rated Ralph Meeker (examine his range in Paths of Glory; the guy could act) just might be the prototypical Mike Hammer... bitch slapping virtually anyone at the slightest provocation. Watch Hammer's face: this guy enjoys violence. He also takes an unbelievable amount of abuse in the course of the movie, getting beat up, shot and irradiated (!). Kiss Me Deadly ultimately falls apart from the crazy plot but earns points for it's sheer outrageousness. Watch it for how wild 1950's film noir can get, logical or not.

Before you hear the title Kiss Me Deadly and begin to enthusiastically sing the chorus of Lita Ford's super-de-duper 1980s hit of the same name, consider that the film Kiss Me Deadly is not soaked with hairspray, musical production echoes, or unironic leather. It's not a cringeworthy exercise in sweaty nostalgia; it's a fundamental work of film noir.

I throw the term "film noir" around in reviews quite often, sometimes seriously and sometimes comparatively. But Kiss Me Deadly is not slight nor an imitation of the genre: along with The Big Sleep, Raw Deal, and The Third Man, it is one of the defining films of the era. Yet it subverts conformity like the plague. Sleazy private eyes and gun-toting broads are fun and all, but what if you suddenly want to embark on a wildcard journey into what resembles an abstract Lichtenstein painting? Don't listen to the crowd; just do it.

The film opens in typical noir fashion. The setting is a kettle-black road in the middle of nowhere, cars zooming in-and-out with the frequency of a moviegoer seeking out Sylvester Stallone's newest movie. But cracking the deadly calm of the shot is a frantic blonde, barefoot, dressed only in a white trenchcoat. Desperate for someone to hitch her out of the nightmare she's living, she lunges in front of a speeding convertible. Inside this convertible is Mike Hammer (Ralph Meeker), a detective. The woman, Christina (Cloris Leachman), has just escaped from a local mental institution; but being caught by her doctors seems to be the last of her worries. Someone, or something, is bothering her.

But her worries become a reality when a group of thugs block the road, knocking out Hammer and brutally murdering his passenger. The next day, he awakens in a hospital bed; paramedics discovered him, his car, and Christina's body residing on a rocky cliff in the early hours of the morning. Despite almost being killed in the violent series of events, though, Hammer is intrigued. Christina, it seems, was part of something bigger, something more threatening. Without hesitation, he takes the case. But as it develops, it becomes quite clear that it isn't going to pass by with the sinfully simple workings of the divorce cases Hammer usually supervises.

Kiss Me Deadly has all the usual noir touches, but there's something compellingly, and unusually, artificial about the atmosphere. Everything looks as though it's part of a set (most likely due to the film's microscopic budget), but its cheapness, purposeful or not, establishes the tone even more than the material. Unlike other film noirs of the time, Kiss Me Deadly doesn't take itself seriously (even if the characters hardly ever crack a smile). It exists in the same universe as a comic strip that stars a Man with X-Ray Eyes or a bloodthirsty Martian disguised as a sex goddess. The film is distinctly fantastical; while The Big Sleep slithers by with witty dialogue and lethal underbellies, Kiss Me Deadly seems to have more in common with Attack of the 50-Foot Woman. This shouldn't suggest that it's a shoddy film; it should suggest that it's in love with itself, fond of its penny dreadful exterior, and isn't afraid to push much of its mystery onto a strange box that kills every person who opens it.

When I watched Kiss Me Deadly for the first time, I didn't understand its critical acclaim. Yes, it's good, but what does it have to offer that other run-of-the-mill film noirs couldn't? Years later, my appreciation has risen by several miles. It isn't so much that Kiss Me Deadly is of superior quality; it's that it is just so, so, so ... otherworldly. Not otherworldly like the mansion Jesus probably lives in up in Heaven or Margot Robbie's beauty, but otherworldly like the realm you might find yourself in if a mirror was a door. The film is of scrumptious pulp quality, unmatched by its peers. Every scene looks like a comic book frame, every character is stock (but not quite). The poster promises "blood-red kisses!" and "white-hot thrills!" And with its campy priorities in mind, it delivers those promises with a wink and a healthy serving of idiosyncrasy.

No need to recap the plot (even if I could) or echo some of the more obvious details.

Notice how no one stops to help poor Christina as she runs down the street frantically at movie's opening. Instead cars whiz by, until Hammer almost wrecks his snazzy car trying to avoid her. In fact, there's not an overload of compassion anywhere in this brutal noir classic.

As I recall, critics of the time reviled it for the unremitting violence and lack of heroics. At the same time, in years of movie watching, I've never heard screams of pain (e.g. Christina, Sugar Smallhouse) so convincing as here. They're almost too much to bear, which was likely Aldrich's intent. Add to the package a scummy, narcissist PI like Hammer, and you've got a melodrama unlike audiences of the time were prepared for. No wonder the movie bombed. (Two previous Hammer films had also disappointed Spillane fans-- I, The Jury {1953}, The Long Wait {1954})

Except this movie was years ahead of its time in both style and content. Sure, the plot doesn't make much sense. There are threads, but they never seem to come together in coherent fashion. Instead, the money hungry Hammer keeps thrashing around in the dark like there's got to be a big payoff somewhere in the tangle he's got himself into. Self-assured to the hilt, he's not one for self-doubt or moments of contemplation. Instead, he bulls his way through every situation, heedless of what he's getting into. I expect folks looking for deeper meanings find plenty of grist with this. Then too, it's hard to say enough about actor Meeker's spot-on portrayal. His Hammer amounts to a guy you neither like nor dislike, but can't help watching anyway (his physical resemblance to Brando is almost astonishing).

The visual style here is almost equally astonishing. Noir b&w has never been photographed (Earnest Laszlo) more effectively than some of those night scenes (e.g. the brutal fist fight between Hammer and his attacker {Paul Richards}), plus the long, dark hallways and staircases that suggest an enclosed world without redemption. Then too, the exploding beach house is well done, though it goes through 4 or 5 increasingly violent blasts, making Aldrich's apocalyptic point, I guess.

But it's not just Hammer and the thugs he's surrounded with. The women we see may be lovely or even beautiful (Carr), but none are to be trusted. Not even Hammer's Velda (Cooper), who, when you think about it, is his willing partner in the scummy infidelity scams that are his bread and butter. How many husbands, for example, has she seduced into grounds for divorce. It's not obvious, but there's a misogynistic undercurrent running through the narrative, which, I guess, is appropriate for the movie's generally nihilistic attitude. (Note how oblivious Hammer is to the grandeur of the classical music around him that keeps popping up in the screenplay. None of that sublime stuff for him.)

No doubt about it, the movie may retain the raw violence and sex that made author Spillane's potboilers so popular in the 50's. But crucially there's no one to root for here, not even the Hammer of Spillane's Cold War novels who kills commies on sight. No, Aldrich's and screenwriter Bezzerides world is not divided into good and evil, in the way that Spillane's brutal Hammer is redeemed by fighting on the good, patriotic side. Instead, the Aldrich world comes across as a nihilistic one, without enduring values, one that can only be redeemed by apocalypse, nuclear style. No wonder the French glommed onto the film immediately. I'm sure those pessimistic themes fit perfectly with the existentialist topics then so popular among their artistic class.

Anyhow, however you choose to take the 100-minutes—as a betrayal of the novels or as a somewhat profound gloss on the human condition-- the movie remains a memorable one-of- a-kind.

I don't know whether the blame for this ought to rest on Spillane, Bezzerides, or Aldrich. Doesn't matter, there's more than enough to go around. It's unfortunate that this movie was "rediscovered" (I use the term with hesitation because I don't think it was ever discovered in the first place. Released, yes. Discovered, not quite) but even more unfortunate that it's received such a glut of critical attention lately. One of the "virtues" critics have been pointing out in this flick is what a great job it does capturing the "soullessness" and "spiritual vacancy" of 50s Southern California. One writer went so far as to liken Meeker to "Marlon Brando with the soul burned out of him." The problem is that the movie doesn't depict a soulless Los Angeles, but that it tries to depict a vibrant and lively LA and does so ineptly. Nick, the mechanic; the elderly Italian porter who gives Hammer a clue; the opera singing informant; the boxing manager; to a lesser extent, Velda, all these characters are lively and engaging and suggest a real humanity against this "soulless" backdrop. However, Ralph Meeker makes Mike Hammer about as interesting as a bag of doorknobs (betcha thought I was going to say hammers). The women characters are painted very shallowly and with trademark Spillane misogyny. I gotta say, I don't know exactly what that's about.

These are broad complaints with the film. I've got a few very specific gripes, but they involve plot points, so be aware of spoilers below.

First, the movie telegraphs just about every major event rather stiffly. Two seconds after Christina, the asylum escapee, says "If we don't make it to the bus stop . . ." viola, they are waylaid and don't make it to the bus stop. Every time the plot needs a forward push, Velda shows up and says "I got a few more names." Very convenient, very wooden, very unsatisfying.

The dialogue is not stylized, it's unnatural. I would say that the delivery is bad, but I don't think this script could have been read well by anybody, which is to say Meeker and Cooper are not up to the task. I think one of the lowest moments comes at the end, when Dr. Soberin is warning Lily about the atomic pinata. In four lines, he piles on the allusion like cold cuts and mixes his metaphors like oil and vinegar to sprinkle on this ugly submarine sandwich of a scene. "What's in the box?" says Lily. "It's like Pandora's box," says the doctor. "You're like Pandora. Don't you know the story of Lot's wife? Please don't open the box, there's a Medusa's head in there. I'm barking like the three heads of Cerberus at the gates of hell." Well, maybe not that bad, but you can check the memorable quotes link for the terrible transcript. A smart mystery writer would limit the allusion to the one significant reference rather than trying to impress with the ridiculous repetition (Robert Parker titles one Spencer mystery "The Widening Gyre," then makes no further reference to this allusion throughout the two-fifty pages that follow).

A final complaint is that there obviously wasn't much research done by Spillane or Bezzerides. Having the good cop Pat explain the entire atomic dilemma simply by saying "Manhattan Project. Los Alamos. Trinity," really sums up the problem. Rather than devising a clear plot, the writers opted to throw around a few atomic age buzzwords that seem to say something while saying very, very little. And then we end up with an image of the Malibu beach house exploding in the 1950s equivalent of a dirty bomb while a gut-shot Hammer clings to Velda in the waves. What is the parallel here? That the hardboiled Hammer will walk off his injury just as the fallout will roll off the back of this soulless Los Angeles?

Idiotic. Reforget this rediscovered tripe and go rent "Out of the Past."

I have to admit, I have always found Ralph Meeker sexy, and he is hot as all get-out as Mike Hammer in "Kiss Me Deadly." He's very Brandoesque, and in fact, followed Brando as Stanley Kowalski in Streetcar on Broadway. He makes a tough Mike Hammer in a tough movie that doesn't let up on the violence or the sexual innuendo. I was never sold on Spillane himself as Hammer and I actively hated Stacy Keach in the TV series, which seemed a little too macho and chauvinistic for the times. In the black and white '50s, it feels just right, if a little more brass knuckles than other films in the genre.

Hammer spends the movie trying to find out the secret that a hitchhiker (Cloris Leachman) was killed for, and all she's left him is a clue, "Remember Me." As people die to the left and right of him, Hammer can only hope he's left standing by the end of the movie.

The ending was very tense and exciting, although I don't believe it was very realistic. At that point, it almost takes on the ambiance of a horror film.

Robert Aldrich gives the film a very fast-paced direction and wonderful atmosphere. Leachman is "introduced" in this film, and she's recognizable immediately. Gaby Rodgers as Lily gives what can only be described as a bizarre performance. Leachman is really the only likable, sympathetic character in the film.

Of note is the early version of an answering machine, which I either saw in one other film, or I saw this movie before - but it's great, an old reel to reel tape recorder mounted on a wall.

One thing I wondered about - when Hammer is being followed at night, the clock says 2:15, so one assumes it's 2:15 a.m. But it seems like everyone is awake - when he gets to the apartment house, the landlord is cleaning the room out and an old man is bringing in a trunk. The clock is in several shots - it says 2:20 also, I believe - so it's not a mistake. Hmmm. Perhaps I missed something, so distracted was I by steamy Ralph Meeker.

A doomed female hitchhiker (Cloris Leachman) pulls Mike Hammer (Ralph Meeker) into a deadly whirlpool of intrigue, revolving around a mysterious "great whatsit." The film withstood scrutiny from the Kefauver Commission (who investigated the mafia), which called it a film designed to ruin young viewers, leading director Aldrich to protest the Commission's conclusions. Today, the film is preserved by the Library of Congress. We can see who won in the long run.

"Kiss Me Deadly" remains one of the great time capsules of Los Angeles and Beverly Hills; the Bunker Hill locations were all destroyed when the downtown neighborhood was razed in the late 1960s.

Homage is paid to the glowing suitcase MacGuffin in the 1984 cult film "Repo Man", the film "Ronin", and in Tarantino's film "Pulp Fiction". The "shiny blue suitcase" is referenced with other famous MacGuffins in "Guardians of the Galaxy". In the film "Southland Tales", Richard Kelly pays homage to the film, showing the main characters watching the beginning on their television and later the opening of the case is shown on screens on board the mega-Zeppelin.

This is, indeed, the greatest of all private eye stories and film noir. With all due respect to such greats as "Asphalt Jungle", this is the real deal.

What makes this film really special is the direction and the characters. The plot itself is not that interesting per se. I have not read the novel but the story in the film is not very coherent and the involvement of the various characters in the plot is not clear at all. Curiously, though, the director does not seem to be interested in clarifying it. Instead, he builds on the ambiguity to create a universe that revolves around something that everyone thinks so important as to sacrifice their life or that of those around them for it, but no one understands what it is.

In terms of the superb direction, I think it is worth pointing out that a few ideas and styles in this film seem to have been of great influence to the work of David Lynch. On the superficial side the opening credits immediately bring to my mind the Lost Highway. The mix of noir and such high levels of ambiguity, often with allusions to the supernatural, characterises the best of Lynch's work. I even found the amalgam of Cristina and Lily/Gabriel to be a prototype to Dorothy Vallens.

This is a great film. Full of Spillane's touches and excesses and featuring a brilliant performance by Ralph Meeker as the quintessential anti-hero Mike Hammer, a thug for every occasion. Trouble is that there is much anti-Spillanestuff going on too. Director Aldrich hated Spillane's book so much he played around with it and turned it into a kind of satire on cold war thrillers and Eisenhower era attitudes. The film portrays Hammer as a real sleaze bag with no redeeming features. OK, the Hammer of the books wasn't a nice guy but Spillane knew that, Aldrich misses the point somewhat by turning into a character to loathe whereas the literary Hammer always has a side of him you can identify with, even if you don't like to admit it. Aldrich redeems himself with some fantastic direction and some solid story telling. This a great latter day noir, though not as good as the first version of 'I, The Jury' made a few years earlier.

Completely surreal and over the top -- the hardest of hard boiled containing every significant marker of this quintessential American genre. Outrageously odd characters and unrelenting cruelty. Meeker is calm, controlled and absolutely deadly, Velma oozes sexuality underscored by a wary cynicism, and Lily is fey, crazy and scary. Every character entertains, crazy quirkiness is rampant and nobody escapes final judgment. The film was astoundingly violent for the mid-fifties and it's psychological cruelty still stuns today. In the end, the cool cynicism and world weariness which marks this genre explodes quite literally and pulls noir out of the darkness into the atomic age.

Almost everything in this whodunit, aside from a glowing McGuffin and a few bits of meta-commentary on its pursuit, was clumsily done.

The lead, Mike Hammer, was a lumbering dullard whom we were lead to believe possessed a roguish appeal to everyone he encountered. It was insultingly implausible. He made Arnie's Terminator look soulful and charming. While his love interest may have been the movie's most stirring character, she didn't have much competition, and she also suffered from bad makeup that made her face look distractingly oily in most scenes. The worst was that his friends and acquaintances consisted mainly of insulting caricatures of foreigners who mysteriously found Hammer's mere block-headed presence an irresistible opportunity to produce a joyful gibberish of mangled English and eye-gougingly bad catchphrases. One was so bad I laughed when he died.

There were some dizzying first-person perspective shots from the front seat of a convertible that were passably cool, and a genuinely scary one featuring a pair of naked legs. Another laudable, though still clumsy, aspect was its mid-1950s attempt to show a white man living at ease in a racially-integrated milieu.

If there's anything now, though, to justify sitting through the movie's full 110 minutes, it's that the movie presents a list of evidence for the audience to weigh the merits of the Space Age's fantasies along with its attendant nightmares. Hammer's gadget-stocked bachelor pad and his sporty cars evidently stood in as heaven, reason enough for putting one foot in front of the other through the insensate, alcohol-fueled haze he lived in, while damnation was an ever-present risk of finding oneself burnt or burning in the flames created by an incomprehensible and alienating technology as it produced the set pieces of the aforementioned heaven.

Given that today's fears consist not only of those deadly kisses offered by science but also the deadly copulation between an unresponsive and intrusive government and runaway corporate greed, the movie only partly works as a clue in our on-going whodunit as to how we got here. There's no shortage of hotter trails to follow, however, none of which include this unappealing cast of characters or the dull, spam-like visage of Mike Hammer.

After watching this cinematic abomination, I felt embarrassed for anyone remotely associated with it, down to the Script Girl, Scene Dresser and the Caterer. One of the worst examples of noir as it's a watered-down version of the Genuine Article that makes clumsy, gratuitous use of early Cold War paranoia in a most cartoonish manner.

Because of its weak script and maladroit direction, the performances of several usually competent actors (Ralph Meeker, Albert Dekker, Paul Stewart, Jack Elam, Cloris Leachman) are either sub par or wasted. Meeker tries to make a go of the Mike Hammer character, but he's too pudgy and soft-looking to be convincing in the role of red-blooded, iron-fisted tough guy. Since the script is so lame, ill-focused and full of extraneous padding, the motivations and actions of his character seem vacant or tentative. His brooding doesn't convey a sense of inner struggle, rather, he comes off as blank-looking and a tad dim. Also, as Hammer has his gun license suspended in the early going of the film, the character without the gat is like Jason Giambi off steroids.

The film does not have enough plot or character development to justify its 100+ minute running time: as perhaps 20 minutes of the picture should have been left on the cutting room floor, the pacing of the movie is sluggish and its narrative management is meandering. There are dozens of very long takes in the film where not much is happening narratively: it seems that the characters are just Doing Things and Killing Time, merely fulfilling the duration requirements of a feature film.

Too many of the film's undercurrents and plot twists are left unexplained. Perhaps this was meant to enhance the intrigue of the piece, maybe this was a tip of the hat to design features of the noir genre, i.e., evanescent and nebulous plot lines, contradictory narrative elements, etc., that add to the mystery of the story and suggest the nature of human reality (that matters don't always tie up at the end into a neat bundle). But I think not: this is just a case of a sloppy, wheezy and ill-managed script not delivering on the responsibility of bringing the audience sufficiently into the loop.

What I found particularly annoying was the insistence on including in the cast ethnic types with bogus foreign accents, jabbering away in an over-the-top fashion. This happens in three instances. Equally annoying was Meeker's/Hammer's habit of drinking out of other people's glasses, taking cigarettes out of other people's pockets, etc.

The handling of the "whatsit" (some sort of vague nuclear material) was pretty hokey, too. Naive and magical treatment of the film's central narrative motivation that was laughable in its implausibility. It was never explained how the Cloris Leachman character got tied up with this atomic intrigue, nor was the justification of crime figures' interest in the black market material. We can make assumptions on the second issue, but the first truly exercises the audience's suspension of disbelief.

Extremely lame ending, too. Hammer, with a slug in him, and Velda waltzing about in the surf while maverick nuclear material merely burns down the beach house. Right. No thought of the ensuing contamination, obviously, by the writers, director and producer of this piece of crap. Also what was truly rich in this regard was the scene at the health club when Hammer opens the box for the first time and is left with a burn on his wrist. No radiation sickness ensues. Right. And just what is that magic box made of that it can contain such virulent material? And the film just kinda ends, somewhat arbitrarily, immediately after the big Hollywood special effects finish. No narrative rundown, no suggestion of what would likely to come next. The incomplete feel to the ending makes one think that maybe they just ran out of film stock at that point.

Also, the women in this flick, excepting Ms. Leachman, are pretty beat up looking. If you're going to have starlets in eye candy, window dressing roles, at least get some babes who look like something. That sweaty actress who played Velda was built like Marcel Marceau and looked like she needed a good bath.

The only positive attributes of this film were technical issues and style points. Some of the scenes were very well composed and shot, there was some good camera movement and the lighting was indeed top notch. The art direction did capture that cheezy mid-1950s feel and the flick was indeed atmospheric, but these are ancillary concerns in relation to the primary purpose of film-making, i.e., storytelling. Loved that 1955 (1954?) Corvette Hammer drove, though...

I saw this film last evening at a theater in downtown Manhattan: most of the audience was laughing out loud at how dreadful this picture is, and there was a palpable sense of relief in the auditorium when it ended.

But all these negatives aren't particularly surprising when you consider who directed this fiasco. Robert Aldrich made a career of writing, directing and producing really lame, stupid, unbelievable and unconvincing films, and this tepid attempt is typical of his third rate oeuvre.