Interesteg What makes it different from others?

GamerTab That was an excellent one.

Colibel Terrible acting, screenplay and direction.

Edwin The storyline feels a little thin and moth-eaten in parts but this sequel is plenty of fun.

hwg1957-102-265704 Based on a Mickey Spillane novel a private detective Mike Hammer picks up a girl on the highway which leads him into danger and murder. It is a B movie but a better made B movie than some and although claims have been made for its political and social resonances it is really a film that enjoys more the violence and sex of pulp fiction. Ralph Meeker is a stolid and dull Mike Hammer and it gets rather hilarious when several over heated young women come on to him all the time. There are some good actors like Albert Dekker, Juano Hernandez, Paul Stewart, Jack Lambert, Jack Elam and Cloris Leachman but they don't have much to do. Wesley Addy as Lt. Pat Murphy comes off the best. , Director Robert Aldrich made several very much better films. One wonders what attracted him to this Spillane pot-boiler. There are a few good scenes but am not sure it is the classic with which it has been labelled.The best thing is the location photography around Los Angeles. You do get a real feeling for the city.

zardoz-13 Robert Aldrich's unsavory film noir adaptation of the Mickey Spillane thriller "Kiss Me Deadly" ranks as one of those seminal hard-boiled detective movies. Ironically, Aldrich's film, which is considered a classic now fared so poorly at the box office that the famous director sold his interest in it. Although he spent most of his career as a second-string character actor, this memorable United Artists' release qualifies as one of actor Ralph Seeker's quintessential epics. He gives new meaning to the adjective 'sleazy' in this role as an amoral Los Angeles private eye who specializes in divorce cases. He teams up with his bombshell secretary Velda (Maxine Cooper) who typically seduces the wandering husband and the inevitable blackmail ensues. "Kiss Me Deadly" wasn't exactly the most politically correct thriller when it came out, and the witch-hunting Kefauver Commission criticized it as "designed to ruin young viewers." Interestingly, the Library of Congress decided to add "Kiss Me Deadly" to the United States National Film Registry in 1999 because the organization felt the film was "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant." If you like your movies to start with a gripping scene, "Kiss Me Deadly" strikes the bull's-eye. This gritty, black & white mystery opens with our anti-heroic protagonist Mike Hammer (Ralph Meeker of "The Anderson Tapes") racing along the highway at night in his convertible sports car when his headlights catch a woman garbed in only a trench coat in their glare. Hammer careens to a skidding halt and obliges this escapee from a woman's prison, Christina Bailey (Cloris Leachman of "Young Frankenstein"), a ride. Unfortunately, the villains capture the two, and these dastardly sadists torture poor Christina to death. Aldrich's depiction of her death is gruesome by any standards, but the depiction didn't violate any code, except the heartless murder of a young woman. As hard as it is to believe, this was back when Cloris was a babe. Incidentally, "Kiss Me Deadly" marked Leachman's cinematic debut! The villains stick Hammer and the murdered girl in the same car and plunge it off a cliff. Miraculously, Hammer defies death and survives! Ultimately, Hammer and the heroine wind up searching for a satchel that contains a cryptic object that not only glows but is extremely incandescent. Quentin Tarantino probably had a baby when he saw "Kiss Me Deadly," and so with aficionados of "Pulp Fiction" when they see this stunning saga! Indeed, the glowing satchel epitomized the equivalent of director Alfred Hitchcock's MacGuffin, an object but serves as an excuse to bring together the heroes and villains in a search to recover it. The ending is something that you have to see to believe and foreshadowed the paranoia of the Cold War with the fearful belief that mankind would destroy itself with deadly weapons.

FilmAlicia Note: This review contains significant SPOILERS. As I was watching for "Kiss Me Deadly" today for the first time, I thought, this is the movie that inspired the look and feel of "Chinatown" more than any other. I even felt that Meeker's matter-of-fact performance as Mike Hammer may have inspired the creation of Jake Gittes, and influenced Nicholson's performance. How about that scene with a very young Strother Martin? I had to go back and watch the film a couple of more times before I realized that's who was playing the truck driver who accidentally ran down one of the victims. The film came out 60 years ago, but it does feel very modern. Some absurdities such as the fact that Christina was able to conceal the key while she was in the mental hospital, since she probably would have been unable to carry it in her stomach for that long without her body getting rid of it in the usual manner. Also, when Mike Hammer went to the morgue to look at Christina's body, it had theoretically been weeks since her death (per Lt. Murphy, in the hospital room scene at the film's beginning) yet Christina's face still looked pretty much as it had when she was alive. Not that it matters, but, did we ever find out how Christina got involved in the plot (the plot within the film, not the film's plot) to begin with? And, of course, what was the nature of what was "in the box" which was so unstable that it caused a nuclear explosion when opened, but could be hauled around in just a metal container and outer case which appeared to be leather, not lead?Ralph Meeker looked like Pat Boone, a bit, but he sure didn't act like him. He was quite a compelling anti-hero, but he met his match in Maxine Cooper, as Velda. I couldn't take my eyes off her during her scenes, and loved her dialogue, especially her references to "the great Whatsit."Cloris Leachman, 60 years ago, was feisty and charming in her brief role. Gaby Rogers, as Lily Carver, came across as a strange and campy presence in the film, but it was that very unreality that made her memorable. We didn't need to see Albert Dekker's face at all, because he did most of his acting with his detached and not-quite-human voice, like the great radio announcer in the sky. An altogether weird, offbeat, and striking film noir, an obvious inspiration to other directors and to many other films, and a film that every noir buff should see. Regarding the film's meaning, I'll leave that for another time. These are just first impressions.

Mr_Ectoplasma Based on the pulp novel by Mickey Spillane, this utterly bizarre film noir features Ralph Meeker as private investigator Mike Hammer, who makes the grave mistake of picking up runaway psychiatric patient Christina Bailey (Cloris Leachman) on a rural road late one night; shortly after, they are attacked, he witnesses her murder, and the two are tossed in his car and pushed over a cliff. Hammer survives, but finds himself in a web of mystery surrounding Christina's perplexing warnings that ultimately lead him to a mysterious box that is hot to the touch, filled with light, and emits ungodly sounds straight out of hell.Robert Aldrich, who later infamously directed the cult thriller "What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?", directs this quirky and surreal film with a great deal of flair— while it at times appears as through-and-through noir, there are plenty of weird twists and turns in the labyrinthine plot as Hammer ventures from character to character, trying to piece together just what the ghostly Christina was caught up in. It's a talky film that relies on a lot of "he said, she said" in relaying crucial plot content (the matter of fact as well as the totally bizarre), but its pacing is even handed, its characters straight shooting, and its spooling of the peculiar details candid and effective.The black and white cinematography lends a significant darkness to the film that enhances its overall off-kilter tone; this is bolstered by the fact that the bulk of it takes place at night. The acting here not astoundingly great, but it's not exactly subpar either— the dialogue is admittedly hokey at times, but given the pulp novel source material, this is forgivable, especially since the film makes up for all of this in mood and presentation. Ralph Meeker is a solid leading man, oozing masculinity and an ego that borders on chauvinism while the female counterparts playfully dance around him— aside from Leachman's character, who wryly indexes him within the first five minutes— she's also the first to die. Feminist readings of the film aside, "Kiss Me Deadly" is probably the most bizarre film noir in cinematic history, and it's also one of the darkest. Its influence can be seen in contemporary film, explicitly referenced by Alex Cox in "Repo Man" and in Tarantino's "Pulp Fiction," and more subtly in the works of David Lynch. The infamous final scene is jaw-dropping and unexpected, and potentially (depending on how you want to look at it) leaves the audience with more questions than answers. Given the Cold War context in which the film was made, the nuclear angle is the most plausible and discussed of course, but Aldrich's dramatic presentation of the iconoclastic "Pandora's box" is still more unnerving than radioactive fallout, the apocalypse, or Pinhead and his vassals. 9/10.