Kiss Me Deadly (1955)

the audience applauded

Memorable, crazy movie

Admirable film.

In truth, there is barely enough story here to make a film.

I can't believe I've waited this long to see this noir classic, but as it concluded, I scratched my head and wondered, Had I seen this film before? Yes. Yes I had. Several times, and under several different titles. And they all contain the same protagonist: James Bond.It's hard to believe producer/director Robert Aldrich or screenwriter A.I. Bezzerides hadn't sued United Artists for copyright infringement. From the opening shot to the last frame, every Bond film has borrowed heavily from Kiss Me Deadly. And credit cannot go to the original author of the pulp novel, Mickey Spillane. He has outright panned the film and claims it has little or nothing to do with his book.Let's start with the opening credits, which begin a few minutes into the film: a full-screen crawl, ala Star Wars, but backwards and moving so quickly that it is near impossible to catch all the names on the screen. This must have been one of the first American films to toy with the opening credits in such a bold way, and I can see where Bond took that technique to another level.The torture scenes that follow are unusually explicit for a film of its time. The screams carry on like those in a David Lynch film. Once our protagonist, Mike Hammer, begins his investigation into the events of that fateful night, the similarities to our British spy multiply. He seems to have little regard for women in general, and in a poolside scene littered with a bunch of gangster heavies and their molls, Hammer is greeted by one of the swimsuit-clad ladies and within minutes they are locking lips. Hammer also appears to take pleasure in inflicting pain as evidenced by the scene where he crushes a man's hand in a desk drawer. It reminded me of the fight scene in the elevator with Sean Connery.The use of a jazz score, although not the first to do so, is very reminiscent of the early Bond films, and the scene with the nightclub singer probably inspired the Bond opening title sequence. Probably the most obvious similarity must be in the way the final scenes played out. At the 3/4 point in the film, Hammer's right hand gal, Velda, gets kidnapped by the henchmen, like all Bond girls do, and is held captive at a secret lair. Hammer tracks her down, breaks in, is held at gunpoint and witnesses the villain's unveiling of the coveted McGuffin, in this instance, a case with a supernatural glow and ominous sounds emanating from within. The villain ultimately gets what's coming to her, the place begins to explode, Bond, I mean Hammer, goes in search of his partner, whisks her away from the inferno and they both watch as the structure burns to the ground. At that point I was half expecting a parachute to drop out of the sky with a phone attached and M on the other line.

KISS ME DEADLY is a mysterious thriller that is full of hysterical fear, paranoia, insanity, psychological cruelty and sexual anxiety. The famous private detective picked up one barefoot, distracted and a seemingly crazed hitchhiker on the street. The unfortunate girl is scared. She carries a deadly secret. The two of them are kidnapped by criminals, which exhausted the girl to death. Detective, by coincidence, survives, and after that, he seeks to uncover the perpetrators and a mysterious secret ...I can not believe that this movie was released in 1955. This is a well-directed thriller. However, I would especially praise the script, which completely excludes the positivity of characters, so that almost all the protagonists, in a certain way, are antagonists. The absence of a vigilante is striking. What particularly attracts attention is the deadly secret or a mysterious object, about which we know nothing, but because of it, we are witnessing constant intrigues, bloodshed and murder. The tension in the film is huge. This film is like a time bomb. I had the feeling that society is falling apart. The end of the film is a "small" nuclear apocalypse, after which there is no epilogue.Ralph Meeker as Mike Hammer is the main antagonist who chooses no means to reach the goal. His motives are unclear, they are cruel and somewhat unfair. He is quite perverse main character, who often used sadistic methods. Cloris Leachman as Christina Bailey was a frightened girl at the beginning of the film. She has really made a striking impression. Her bare feet on the cold asphalt, her sighs full of fear and excitement (that borders with a sexual climax), mixed with a great opening theme music are for memory. Maxine Cooper (Velda) as unloved paramour and Gaby Rodgers (Gabrielle) as rolled up and crush roommate are not up to the challenge, despite the game full of conspiracy and intrigue. A femme fatale in the film practically does not exist.One good nihilistic noir has a refreshing effect.

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.

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.