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Aldrich and screenwriter A. I. Bezzirides took on Mickey Spillane's popular P.I. Mike Hammer, but aside from keeping the basic plot outline of the original novel, they completely changed the nature of the character in a very reactionary move. Spillane's Mike Hammer is a New York detective-avenger, a self-righteous vigilante who deals out justice when the paralyzed forces of the law can do nothing: he's a vicious knight on a mean-spirited quest to right wrongs through brute force. (The title of the first Hammer novel, "I, the Jury" pretty much sums up his attitude.) The movie relocates Hammer to Los Angeles and turns him into a shallow con-artist who only cares about his car and his looks. He's a lousy detective too, relying on knocking people around for information, often innocent inoffensive folks, and never really paying attention to the important details of the case. His detective work is entirely matrimonial, where he and his `assistant' Velda put the squeeze on couples to blackmail them. Hammer's motto is simple: "What's in it for me?" Ralph Meeker is perfect in the role, looking as if someone carved him out of slab of meat.
No doubt, in this story Hammer is in way over his head...if only he knew it. He picks up a nearly naked girl (Cloris Leachman in an early role) who throws herself in front of his sports car. Later, they're run off the road, and faceless gangsters torture her to dearth and leave Hammer for dead.
... Read more ›Everything was so innovative in this movie from the initial credits rolling backwards over Cloris Leachman running half-naked on the road and gasping in Mike Hammer's car with a quite erotic intensity. From the sadistic torture scene of Christina Bailey to the character of Maxine -Velda- Cooper who helps Mike Hammer to nail adultery husbands by seducing them. From the secondary characters so well written that it seems that they all have a tremendously important role in the story.
At last, the performance of Ralph -Mike Hammer- Meeker is so perfect that it's hard to imagine another actor in the role. I personally can't. And Nick Dennis, Mike Hammer's friend, whose onomatopeia are now part of Movie History. And, and...
OK ! check for yourselves if you still don't know this movie. Superb copy with various subtitles, the alternate ending and the original trailer.
A DVD zone your library.
The Mike Hammer that Meeker portrays is greedy and sadistic. He takes great pleasure inflicting pain on others, and stepping on as many toes as possible to get what he wants. With a lead character as trashy as the one Meeker portrays you can only imagine how cold-blooded the rest of the people in this movie are.
"Kiss Me Deadly" is one of the more rarely seen classic detective pictures; this is a shame. From the very first shot of this picture, you can feel the crime-detective genre being pushed and beaten into directions no one has ever seen before.
There are some people who did not understand the ending of this picture. It's simple: "Be careful what you go looking for, you might not like what you find."
This is one wonderfully stylish, suspensful, and unusual motion picture. You owe it to yourself to check it out!
This film was down the list somewhat, because I had not seen it and the cast seemed sort of mediocre. Reading the great online Amazon reviews has shaped my choices profoundly. So I took a chance on this. And IT MADE MY HAIR CURL!! (And my hair's straight!)
Extremely noir it is, but much more. The pace goes less crackingly than some other films noirs, but the plot is very dense and convoluted in a most satisfying way (akin to 'The Big Sleep' with Bogart & Bacall, I suppose.) It is not in the same category of noir, in terms of production values and budget, as such alleged classics of the genre as "Double Indemnity" and "The Postman Always Rings Twice." It lacks the darkling cinematography of "The Big Combo". But it shows us a thoroughly dirty LA, a cast of unpleasantly unwholesome females (no delicately beautiful Jean Wallace here, as in "Big Combo".) In fact, no classy or good-looking dame to be seen.
We come now to Ralph Meeker. His Mike Hammer is hard-boiled but not in an overt way, like Cagney's Cody Jarrett in 'White Heat', for one. He is just one masculine, selfish, obtuse private eye... maybe a little bit weary of the female form, the female bag of tricks. Nevertheless, despite his cool, even stolid demeanor, for me he's the sexiest, handsomest gumshoe EVER.
The camera work is highly competent but doesn't strive to be overly-arty; in places it's almost surreal. The film has such a depressing air to it that I wonder if ANY film qualifies better to be film noir par excellence.
And the ending... the restored ending, that is... well, my hair will never be the same again. WOW! All I can say is, FIVE solid stars.... Read more ›
by the accolades of the masses
to repudiate the lack luster
fortunes of todays mediocrity and
to add to the plethora of... Read more
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