Dorathen Better Late Then Never

Connianatu How wonderful it is to see this fine actress carry a film and carry it so beautifully.

Derry Herrera Not sure how, but this is easily one of the best movies all summer. Multiple levels of funny, never takes itself seriously, super colorful, and creative.

Payno I think this is a new genre that they're all sort of working their way through it and haven't got all the kinks worked out yet but it's a genre that works for me.

Robert J. Maxwell It's a coherent narrative, I guess, and it's not insulting to anyone's intelligence or basic sense of morality. It's just an assault on one's aesthetic apparatus. My eyeballs felt coagulated after half watching this junk and half snoozing through it.Mickey Spillane plays Mike Hammer, a character he created in some pulp fiction novels of the early 50s. They achieved a certain notoriety at the time. When Private Eye Mike Hammer plugs a beautiful babe in the belly at the end of "I, The Jury," she gasps, "Mike, how could you do this?" And Mike snarls, "It was easy." Well, you don't have to be a literary giant to write hard-boiled pulp fiction. It has a long, if mostly undistinguished, history. Dashiell Hammett gave us a couple of good stories, most notably "The Maltese Falcon." Sam Spade went down in history. Hammett had a fascinating detective story to tell and lots of local San Francisco color. You can still order the Sam Spade Special at Jack's Restaurant, and there is a bronze plaque on the street corner where Miles Archer was killed.Raymond Chandler's Philip Marlowe brought a touch of street poetry with him in his anfractuous adventures in Los Angeles. "Her hair was the color of gold in old painting." And, "She gave me a look that I could feel in my hip pocket." I could never follow Chandler's stories and neither could Chandler but what the hell.Mickey Spillane was different from these earlier stars. He didn't have an interesting story to tell and he'd have to look up "poetry" in the dictionary. The novels were just forgettable junk, like most of the stories in the pulp magazines of the 30s and 40s, with titles like, "Somewhere a Roscoe" and "The Dead Blond." The movie is about as good as his novel -- or it would be if author Mickey Spillane did not play his own hero, Mike Hammer. The guy is bulky and squinty eyed and shapeless. He has the voice of a really bad teacher of algebra. Not even the glossy Shirley Eaton can compensate for his presence or for the absence of an involving narrative. It has something to do with his finding his secretary, Velda or Velma. The story begins with Hammer as an abject drunk picked up and beaten by the cops, but it's impossible to tell the difference between Hammer as drunk and Hammer as reinvigorated private eye.The sound is scratchy, the photography wretched, and the musical score infinitely repetitive -- a bluesy trumpet with four notes in its repertoire. The director seems to know what a loser he's got here because he makes no attempt to dress up this dreck. Hammer enters a seedy saloon on his quest and you can tell it's seedy because somebody is playing a honky tonk piano in the background as if this were Dodge City.The good part is I awoke refreshed and alert after that brief nap.

sol (There are Spoilers) Laying in the gutter dead drunk with a possible fractured skull Mike Hammer, Mickey Spillane, is picked up by the police. Instead of being brought to the local hospital for emergency treatment he's brought to the hospice ward to talk to this dying man who's about to kick off. Small time hood Richie Cole, Murray Kash, will only talk to Hammer and no one else and with everyone out of his hospital room, where Cole is on life-support, he spurts out a few puzzling words before checking out for good. The only thing that the inebriated Mike Hammer can make out to Cole's babbling is Velda and the Dragon. It turns out that the reason for Hammer having this farewell chat with Cole is that the dying man was shot with the same gun that killed Senator Leon Knapp in a burglary of his wife's Laura, Shirley Eaton, jewelery in their upstate New York home.It was Cole's mention of Velda Mike Hammer's private secretary who's been missing for years, and the reason he became an alcoholic, that got him excited and willing to go all out to solve Cole's murder in that there's now evidence that she's alive not dead like everyone, including Mike Hammer, thought. Hammer is also contacted by Federal, or CIA, Agent Arthur Rickerby, Llyod Noland, who tells him the truth about the now departed Cole in that he was both CIA and undercover in Europe investigating this super-secret Commie spy ring called Butterfly Two.It just happened that Cole hooked up with Velda who's also CIA, which Hammer didn't know about, in trying to exposed the Commie spies but were found out about through a mole in the US government this lead to both Cole's and Senator Napp's murder. In fact, Hammer later learns, that Senator Knapp's death over a jewel robbery was only a red herring in order for the US State Department not to realize that he was killed because he came too close, like Cole & Velda, in finding out about this Butterfly Two spy ring.Feeling that Velda is still alive Hammer sobers up, even though he's constantly in bars and drinking mugs of beer all throughout the movie, and goes out to find who was responsible for Cole's and Senator Napp's murder. Hammer sensing that their killer is now out to get the missing and elusive Velda who's the only one who not only knows his identity but who he works for: Butterfly Two. Checking out the secret's of the Butterfly Two spy organization with his good friend news columnist Hy Gardner Hammer finds out that it existed in Europe will before the Commies took over Czarist Russia. The organization was infiltrated by the Commies after WWI and is now in the process of secretly overthrowing all the free world governments, from within. Making their demises look like popular revolutions without the leaders of the free world knowing that it's really the Commies who are doing it. It turns out that the very existence of freedom and democracy in the world now hinges on the broad shoulders of private dick Mike Hammer who goes out to put a stop to Butterfly Two but also to find and rescue his secretary and girlfriend Velda. Despite being an obvious Neanderthal, in his brutal and no holds bar dealings with the enemies of freedom and democracy, Hammer's unique caveman-like charm does in fact score points with the fairer sex. We see him get classy and refined Laura Knapp, the dead Senator Knapp's wife, to practically jump in the sack with him the first time she lays her eyes on the big gorilla. Laura even strips down to the most reveling of bikinis, that would be allowed to be shown on the screen back then in 1963, wherever Hammer shows up at Laura's place in his investigation of her husbands murder.Finding out from a number of close friends and informants that this mysterious Dragon is the Commies, or Butterfly Two, top assassin Hammer now knows that times running out on Velda and that she's sure to be knocked off if he doesn't stop him and stop him soon. With the help of his newsboy friend Duck-Duck, Clive Endersby, who left him in this secret letter inside a magazine the location where he can find Velda, dead or alive, Hammer tracks down the Dragon that leads to a knock down and drag out fight. The Dragon ends up getting the worst of it with him being impaled with a spike driving through his right hand in order to keep him from escaping justice; it looked like Hammer in his excitement to save Valda forgot to take his handcuff along.The movie ends without any Velda, which makes you wonder if there's a part II in the works, but with Mike Hammer discovering who the mole that's feeding Butterfly Two all this top secret information is. He turns out to be someone that anybody watching the movie would have guessed it is as soon as he, or her, appeared on the screen. Even though his acting in the movie was really nothing to write home about Mickey Spillane did very much look the part of his creation Mike Hammer, The mans got a face that looked as if it was used by the US Navy's 16 inch guns for target practice. Not really an actor, just playing himself, Mickey Spillane did show he can handle the part of the durable and brutal Mike Hammer especially when he gets, or gives in return, the hell beat out of him. What did surprise me about Spillane in how cool and confident he was with the ladies who, besides the gorgeous Laura Knapp, just couldn't resist the big lug no matter how crude and uncouth he acted towards them.

jantoniou I was shocked to see a movie with a writer actually playing one of his characters, especially one as iconic--or, at least, notable--as Mike Hammer. I can only recall Stephen King playing in some of his scripts, but even then he did not tend to be a major, featured character. His stories have soared most with great actors, writing, and directing behind them ("The Green Mile," "Shawshank Redemption," "The Shining," "Misery," and many others).Mickey Spillane is woefully short of King's humility, though. The movie has an intriguing plot, but is convoluted beneath the weight of bad acting and mostly wretched delivery. The dialogue is actually pretty believable, all things considered, but you can feel the crowd assembled on the screen is mostly amateurs. The amateurish feel coupled with the somewhat on-target dialog sort of coupled to create a more "fun" movie than what is probably intended and it stays thin on the noir-ish elements, which often seem clichéd in most movies anyway.Spillane is generally horrible as a supposed slick lady's man--which Stacy Keach carried off much more believably with his charisma and acting chops, if not looks, on television. Spillane's pretty dry and one-note as Hammer, but at least he doesn't tend to ham it up. In fact, I'm not sure he is capable of ham.Shirley Eaton is excellent as the eye candy and Hammer's love interest, but Spillane just butchers some of his lines with her; for example, when she asks Hammer if he loves her, Spillane lowly rasps in the back of his throat, "I think I do, baby." It's really a pretty lame attempt at being emotional. And, kissing together? Just horrible face-mashing and a real waste of such an exquisite beauty as Eaton's. Spillane just has no idea how to be expressive and believable; his face is just a pancake throughout the movie. It gives a certain "naturalism" to the movie, but probably not in a good way for someone that needs to be as dynamic as Mike Hammer.Though it would have been very easy to have it, there is almost no dramatic tension in this movie, just a series of pasted-together scenes that Spillane meanders through. On a highly superficial level it works--the basic pieces ultimately fit--but there's no elegance to the design, probably due to lack of presentation on the part of most of the actors.The story is good enough to be re-made as a true noir-ish exploit, but the acting and stylistic elements need a real working through.

woid You know the moment in "The Producers" when the Broadway theatre audience sits stupefied by the unbelievable awfulness of what they're seeing? I watched most of "The Girl Hunters" with a similar slack-jawed, eye-popping expression.The ultimate vanity project, in which Mickey Spillane stars as his own ultra-macho detective, Mike Hammer. And, he's miscast! He can't act, can barely deliver his own awful dialogue, and is laughably terrible throughout the movie. Even better, Mickey cast his also-can't-act pals in supporting roles. The tabloid columnist Hy Gardner never met a line of dialogue he couldn't butcher. Lloyd Nolan phones it in, looking like he's ready for the laxative commercials he would soon be doing. And then there are the assorted slabs of beef who pound Hammer and get pounded by him, in the trademark sadomasochistic Spillane style.Of course he gets the girl (Shirley Eaton!!!). In fact, the most unwatchable shot in the whole movie is the slow track to a closeup of their mouths as they make out for the first time. I dare you not to blink.And then there's the music! Laid on with a trowel, it's the same over-orchestrated catchy trumpet blues riff repeated a hundred times, usually crescendoing over a meaningless shot of Hammer walking down a hall, or driving up a road, punctuating exactly the wrong moments in a film that's just chock full of 'em.Only 103 minutes, but I would have guessed two hours. Grill a steak, pour a scotch, fire up a cancer stick, and don't miss it!!