Kiss Me Deadly

First-rate Mickey Spillane adaptation, easily the best film version of any of his novels that I've seen. Private eye Mike Hammer (Ralph Meeker) investigates the reasons behind the death of a hitchhiker (Cloris Leachman in her film debut). It's a gritty, tough, violent noir with some good dialogue and morally grey (at best) characters. Meeker's the perfect Hammer. Albert Dekker has a small but important part. The rest of the cast is good except for Nick Dennis, who goes full Eli Wallach in his role as Hammer's mechanic friend. Robert Aldrich directs with style. The ending is pretty cool, but it's definitely one of those "love it or hate it" things. It's certainly memorable, which I think most of us can agree is part of what makes any film great.

"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

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.

Movies like "Kiss Me Deadly" are reassuring that there's more to each genre than meets the eye. "Kiss Me Deadly" is part hard-boiled detective story & part apocalyptic sci-fi horror film. The movie suspects its own plots and its conventions are ludicrous. The result is a highly inventive film with a ridiculous but highly enjoyable storyline and comically fascinating characters.

The basic plot, loosely adapted from Mickey Spillane's bestselling novel,is: after private-eye Mike Hammer picks up a hitchhiker who is later murdered, he becomes determined to learn the truth about her death. Although the plot becomes more and more insane, it's highly interesting. There are no empty twists, as each one leads to something larger and more confounding.

I've never had more fun with a film noir character than the aptly named character of Mike Hammer. He isn't intimidated by any man and denies the world's hottest women. If he holds the upper hand in a situation, he seems virtually impenetrable. This characteristic leads to the ever-prevalent theme in film noirs of men vs. women and their places in relationships and society.

The film is a masterpiece of cinematography, exhibited in the disorienting camera angles and unique and unconventional compositions of Ernest Laszlo. In fact, Ernesto Laszlo's cinematography is so apt with the film's randomness that it made me giddy.

One of the most distinctive aspects of Kiss Me Deadly is the outrageousness of its final few seconds: the movie doesn't conclude, it detonates. In the hands of the director Robert Aldrich, the film becomes a starting point for a delirious expression of 1950s anxiety and paranoia, starting with opening credits that run backwards and ending with an atomic explosion.

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.