Customer Reviews

Kiss Me Deadly

5 star:		(37)
4 star:		(36)
3 star:		(10)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(4)

 

 

Robert Aldrich's 1955 detective thriller, "Kiss Me Deadly," came at the end of the American classic film noir cycle, and shows the genre at its most violent, surreal, cruel, cynical, and visually bizarre. It's the last great explosive moment of the classic era of film noir -- and I do mean explosive. This is one detective film, like "Chinatown," which you won't soon forget.

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. Hammer sets out to find out what's up; not because he cares what happened to the girl, but because he sniffs out big money and he'd like to get the guys who wrecked his sports car! Hammer finds himself in a violent quest to locate an object that everyone desires: a package called `The Great Whatsit.' The Great Whatsit isn't a meaningless red herring or Hitchcock McGuffin, however. Its contents are the great surprise of the plot, and the perfect exclamation point on a movie taking place in a chaotic world that seems to be falling apart. I won't tell what the Great Whatsit is (and shame on the reviewers here who have!), but...oh wow!

And this brings us to the issue of the ending, and the only extra on this disc. (Don't worry, I'm not going to spoil the ending.) For years, "Kiss Me Deadly" had a mysteriously abrupt finale that many people praised for its surreal, weird quality. This was how I first saw it. However, in 1997 the original ending was discovered in Aldrich's personal print of the film by editor Glenn Erickson and film noir scholar Alain Silver. Apparently, an accident involving a careless projectionist snipped off part of the ending, so what we had enjoyed and critiqued for years was actually a mistake! The new ending shown on this disc fortunately doesn't change the tone of the film: it's still pretty astonishing, filled with a brilliant use of light and sound effects. However, there's still something about that abrupt ending that gets to people. The DVD contains the option to watch this original abrupt ending so you can make up your mind which one `feels' more right to you: what the director intended, or the mistake that many embraced as a stroke of brilliance.

No matter which ending you like, "Kiss Me Deadly" is a fabulous piece of brutal crime cinema. The photography is amazing, filled with weird and surreal images and crazy camera angles. The performances are all dead-on: Meeker's ugly Mike Hammer; Albert Dekker as the sinister and poetry spouting Dr. Soberin; Wesley Addy as Hammer's police acquaintance Pat, the sole voice of reason in the mess; Paul Stewart as a smarmy L.A. gangster; the late Jack Elam as freaky thug; and Gaby Rodgers in the film's strangest performance as the distant, weird, but ultimately very dangerous (to every living thing on the planet!) Lily Carver.

If you love detective films and film noir, "Kiss Me Deadly" is a great must-see classic. For a 1950s film, it is surprisingly violent and far ahead of its time. And either end will leave you shivering in shock. If only they had the guts to end films this way today!

Robert Aldrich's KISS ME DEADLY is one of these movies I watch every two or three years with the same pleasure. When I discovered it for the first time long ago, Film Noir meant Humphrey Bogart, Howard Hawks, James Cagney or John Huston to me. So imagine the shock KISS ME DEADLY gave me.

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.

Absolute film noir heaven (or hell, depending on how you look at it.) A film so visually and stylistically arresting that the somewhat intricate and confusing plot becomes a moot point, one can't help but watch this 1955 (!) Robert Aldrich masterwork with a sense of awe. We may be in disagreement on the assessment of Jerry Lewis' "genius", but as for the importance of this film's influence on susbsequent cinema, I have to agree with the French on this one! Ralph Meeker's sneeringly existential and Brandoesque Mike Hammer persona in this film has been imitated many times but never matched.One interesting note: 1984's "punk-noir" classic "Repo Man" borrowed quite heavily from this film...make it a double bill some slow night and you'll be amazed and bemused!

Having seen the film several times now, I decided to venture into the novel on which it is based. Aside from a few name changes, the plot is essentially the same, though some details and sequences of events are altered. In the novel, the 'Mafia' is mentioned as the sinister force behind the abductions and murders that frame the plot, but in the film the 'M' word is never even mentioned! Also, in the novel, the setting is New York City, whereas in the film it is (conveniently for Hollywood) Los Angeles. Mike Hammer in the novel is a brusque, hard-hitting private dick who takes out his enemies with his bare hands. Several passages in which he bare-handedly dispatches the thugs trying to do him in are conspicuously absent from the film. In one episode he pulls the eyeballs out of his opponent's head! The film's version of Hammer is decidedly meeker, though tough enough and callous enough to carry the plot. Ralph Meeker plays Hammer not so much as a tough guy seeking justice, but rather as a hedonist who happens to be caught up in 'Something Big'. In the film, the solution to the riddle of the 'Whatsit' is more of an item of curiosity than of righteousness or vengeance. In the novel, too, the nature of the 'Whatsit' is revealed fairly early on, in contrast to the film, where the nature of the mysterious package is kept concealed until almost the end.

The changes in the film, though technically minor, affect the whole tone of the work. The novel is darker, with many more episodes taking place on rainy days, or at night, in dark alleys and bars.

Recommended.

This is easily one of the most outstanding pieces of film noir ever made. Ralph Meeker, (An actor who usually played bad guys.), plays a very anti-heroic Mike Hammer.

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!

"Kiss Me Deadly" -among the noirest. Spillaine, Bezzerides and Meeeker triumph. This is the way movies, cinema, film, flicks were meant to be-branded into the ether forever.

Most unaccountably, "Kiss Me deadly" has been long underated or neglected, like its director Robert Aldrich, whose best is probably "The Dirty Dozen" or "Whatever Happened to Baby Jane." Though "Kiss Me Deadly" does not feature the incredibly campy battle between Bette and Joan, it still gives us a dynamite opening where a frantic girl is desperately running, with her foot naked, on the deserted highway at midnight. She needs a help, she says to detective Mike Hammer, who happened to be driving there. This is the start of another long day for this LA private eye.

Then follow some deaths, and threats from government agents and secret organization alike. Hammer's investigation is, as is the case with the genre, full of plot twists, but Aldrich never gets us bored with his rather laid-back direction and occassional shock materials provided for the fans. The violence (such as torture) is all suggested, not directly depicted, but the power is still there after half a century. The dialugues or situatons are all intentionally clunky, as if Aldrich is telling that the events are all happening on another planet. But his tactics work, giving the entire picture some strange feelings like another world.

We must remember that the film is made soon after the WW2, and the world is haunted with the images of nuclear age, and the conflicts between two superpowers. Clearly the weird touch of the film reinforces the uneasiness of these times found in the film, and the fears of the days are conveyed to us even now. So, nothing is fully explained; everything is suggested. You find a box, but you don't know what it is (but can guess). And the "shock" ending has not lost its power yet.

Actors are comparatively unknown except the prolific Cloris Leachman (later wins Oscar for "The Last Picture Show"), but that doesnot matter. Just watch it, and enjoy its stylish camerawor, and shocks that its audiences saw years ago. And find the possible inspiration for the "box" which Jules and Vincent had in a coffee shop in "Pulp Fiction."

Kiss Me Deadly seems light years ahead of the studio made film noirs of just ten years earlier. Seventy-five per-cent of it is shot on location in Los Angeles circa mid fifties. Likewise the performances by Ralph Meeker and company are gritty and disturbingly honest. Meeker is the master of understatement and his Mickey Spillane is by far the quintessential reading of this pulp detective. Meeker inhabits his roles so thoroughly it's hard to pick him out in his various screen performances. The great fun of this cienimatic ride is following Spillane thru seedy L.A. and meeting the underworld characters, B-girls, and working-class joes that populate his world. Hold on to your hats for the surprise ending as Spillane follows the links to the contraband he was hired to find.

This late entry into the film noir genre has some harsh and memorable scenes and an ending unlike any other film noir. Of course, most of those weren't made during the A-Bomb scares of the mid 1950s, as this was.

The movie features a tough, no-nonsense Mike Hammer-like private eye, played well by Ralph Meeker, whose narration is a little dated but fun to hear. This is one of those noirs in which everyone is a tough-talking, tough-acting mug and one never knows who to trust. Except for Cloris Leachman, who is only in the first quick (but haunting) opening scene, the females in here are unfamiliar actresses but people with interesting faces and personalities.

That opening with Leachman is a real attention-grabber and is one of the best starts I've ever seen in a crime movie. It's very creepy, as is the unique ending. I also appreciated the cinematography in here a lot more once the DVD was issued.

Kiss Me Deadly is stylish and moves along nicely but whichever ending you choose, its unrelenting in its grimness.

I disagree that Meeker portrays Mike Hammer as a bad guy. He gives everybody what they've got coming; its just that he enjoys it.

Don't want to give away the ending but let's just say it has more in common with science fiction than film noir. Those expecting a happy ending should get a different DVD.