KISS ME DEADLY

Kiss Me Deadly, Robert Aldrich, director, 1955 

 

PITCH: Hard-boiled private eye vs. the atomic age. The P.I. loses. 

 

STORY: Mickey Spillane’s Mike Hammer (Ralph Meeker), a cheap, sleazy, vigilante, is searching for a mysterious box he knows nothing about, save for the fact that it contains something more valuable than anything he has ever chased in the past. This great whatzit is a symbol of truth that promises each character an answer to something inexplicable. The final discovery buried the film noir genre forever.

  

HOOK: If the 50s seem surreal, this is a b&w Dali masterpiece.

 

JOHN: Mike Hammer was the tough guy hero of kids my age. Ralph Meeker gives him a snarling brutishness that is necessary for the ending of the film but not the kind of Clint Eastwood, Humphrey Bogart tough guy you want to emulate (even in your male fantasies). The women are more psycho than seductive and the light pulsating form the mysterious case everyone is searching for is the best symbol of evil the movies have ever come up with. Warning: The re-mastered DVD shows a more romanticized ending, the “alternative ending,” which is a bit more existential, is the one that was shown in theaters during the films initial release. In both the final words THE END zoom out from the inside of the exploding house. And it is.

  

 GO GO GO (4 GOs out of four)

 

SPANKY: This film fits my category of  “Cars You Love to Chase.” The film starts with a white Jaguar convertible coupe driving down a lost highway. Then we get a classic MG, followed later by an early model Corvette. What we want to do when the Jag plunges off the cliff is stop the film and run it backward. In fact if you did that with the entire film you’d have a contemporary Book of Genesis, starting with a Big Bang and ending with a naked lady running down the road (also that way Ralph would become “meeker”).

  

“TWO PAWS UP” (4 BARKs out of four)

  

KEEPER: “Kiss me, Mike. I want you to kiss me…The liar’s kiss that says ‘I love you,’ but means something else. You’re good at giving such kisses. Kiss me.”