Kiss Me Deadly (1955)

Taking The Hammer to L.A.

Mike Hammer is transplanted to the left coast in this overrated but entertaining cult classic. Rather than being a two-fisted gumshoe, here Mike does sleazy divorce work and practically pimps out Velda. The picture starts off strong, but sinks into a very convoluted plot. The thrills come from the ahead-of-it's-time violence -- some of the most sadistic of which is handed out by Hammer. The picture also takes the cynisism of 50s noir and extends that to the political climate with it's much vaunted apocalyptic ending. This seems to lay the groundwork for 70s thrillers like Parallax View and Three Days of the Condor with their paranoia and suspicion.

Meeker's okay, but the picture might play better if the other women were as good as Cloris Leachman in the opening scenes. November 10, 2008

Kiss Me Deadly is Film Noir at Its Best.

American film director Robert Aldrich (1918-1983) is synonymous with great films like What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? (1962), Hush...Hush, Sweet Charlotte (1964), and The Dirty Dozen (1967). Based on the Mickey Spillane pulp mystery bestseller of the same name, Aldrich's 1955 film noir classic, Kiss Me Deadly, stars Ralph Meeker as lowlife Los Angeles gumshoe, Mike Hammer, on a quest for "something big." The fact that this B movie was the inspiration for later films including Spielberg's Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981), Alex Cox's Repo Man (1984), Tarantino's Pulp Fiction (1994), and David Lynch's Lost Highway (1997) is reason enough to add Kiss Me Deadly to one's film collection.

As film noir, Kiss Me Deadly is so dark it is arguably nihilistic. It opens with a young woman, Christina (Cloris Leachman), hitchhiking in her bare feet and a trench coat along a lonely road. After catching a ride with hard-boiled detective Mike Hammer, she is tortured to death by thugs fifteeen minutes later. Soon anti-hero Hammer finds himself outside the comfort zone of the sleazy divorce cases he typically investigates, and at the center of a international intrigue. The darkly-sinister, fast-paced thriller ends with an over-the-top atomic blaze. Meeker carries the film, and this fully-restored DVD edition features both the original ending and the alternate ending of Kiss Me Deadly. Highly recommended.

G. Merritt October 13, 2008

Film noir, yes, Mickey Spillane, no

I admit to liking this movie. Spillane hated it and what Aldrich did to the character of Mike Hammer, turning from a violent angel of retribution to simply a violent and not too bright thug. The ending (or endings if you like) have to be the strangest ever for a film noir. May 12, 2008

Influential

I will not talk about the plot, as the story took some interesting turns that came as a pleasant surprise. The movie drags at points, but is fun overall. The look of the film has clearly been a big influence on many films - from Lost Highway to Repo Man and Raiders of the Lost Ark, but it is the slightly surreal night scenes that have the most impact and constantly reminded me of the works of David Lynch.

The dvd print is average quality, a little murky at times. The dvd itself is bare bones with just a trailer and an alternate ending, which is mostly the same but truncated. April 27, 2008

Pulp Fiction

A lot of pulp, and a lot of fiction. At least I discovered where QT got one of his ideas from, and understood how he developed the pulp as well as the fiction. But the uniquely interesting feature of this film is the ultra-basic persona of Mike Hammer, who seems to me unlike any other central character, good or bad, in any other film, play or novel. He's not really bad, but certainly isn't good, either: he just is. He's not entirely stupid, but you couldn't call him clever. He doesn't survive because he's smart: he just survives. Also, he doesn't really know what he's doing, he merely figures that he's on to something big, and wants to hunt it down. When given a truth drug, it doesn't work, because he doesn't know anything, and isn't interested in truth anyway. There's something new, but familiar about this individual. It's as though he were the id beneath the id. A sort of fundamental impulse underlying all life, enabling it to function, regardless. Totally unsentimental, only generous if it doesn't cost him anything except a few greenbacks, motivated by revenge sometimes, in a limited sort of way. The story, such as it is, is vividly shot. Any acting is based more on the simple physical appearance of the assorted thugs and molls. It's a strange and memorable production, but I couldn't honestly call it great. December 3, 2007

More reviews at Amazon.com ...