Kiss Me Deadly (1955)

Gas station attendant: Oh, the Jag wasn't good enough for you, huh?
Mike Hammer: Yeah, the ashtrays were all full.

After WW2 a new fear struck major Nations around the world.  The Hydrogen Bomb.  World War 2 had ended and the Cold War had begun with images of the familiar mushroom cloud circulating, the fear that a city full of people could be wiped out in one fiery blast and the horror of being affected by radiation became imprinted on people’s minds.  This sparked a new idea in the Hollywood scene, and during that “Film Noir” period of the ‘40s and ‘50s arose a few movies that looked at certain aspects of the whole nuclear fear that was floating around.  The first cab off the rank was the *1950 D.O.A (aka Dead on Arrival) which focused not on destruction of a city, but the slow death of an individual.  Then in 1952 we had “The Thief”, “Split Second”, “The Atomic City” then in 1953 “Pickup on South Street” and “World for Ransom” in 1954 then “Shack Out on 101” in 1955 along with our film for today’s review Kiss Me Deadly.  

Directed by Robert Aldrich, the film is very loosely based on the novel Kiss Me Deadly written by Mickey Spillane in his series of pulp novels.  The main character Mike Hammer (who Mickey Spillane also played in the 1963 film “The Girl Hunters”), is a no-nonsense private detective who is not afraid to slap some people around in order to get an answer though this is amplified a little in this particular movie.  

The start of the movie is quite original where we see a girl running down the road who almost gets hit by a passing car driven by Mike Hammer (Ralph Meeker).  He offers her a lift, she gets in the car and then the opening credits start but they don’t just appear like all other movies of that time or now for that matter, but rather they scroll down the screen in a backward manner whilst Mike drives the car along a lonely road in the middle of the night.  The whole opening sequence gets you in from the start, similar in a way to the opening scene of Orson Welles Touch of Evil (1958) where the camera follows a car from the American border town across the border to Mexico before it blows up, however here it’s the titles that also grab you.

From here this strange girl leads Mike on a dangerous path that eventually leads to a mysterious box that is later likened to Pandora’s box.  What’s in it?  Why are the contents of this box so important that people will kill for it?  What is the bright light?  These are all questions that go through our mind in this Cold War Noir film.  

In fact, it was these scenes containing light emitting box that influenced films like 1984’s Repo Man starring Emilio Estevez and 1994’s Pulp Fiction and once you see it it’s not hard to imagine it also having some kind of impact on Spielberg’s Raiders of the Lost Ark.

The cinematography is brilliant in its use of camera angles, light and shadow, long or twisted staircases that are dark and mysterious which just screams noir (like the wonderful Touch of Evil by Orson Welles).  The filming locations in L.A are mostly gone now but they live on in this film as a part of history.  The actors do a good job in portraying their characters and are well directed in this mysterious Film Noir.

The Bluray reviewed here is the American Criterion edition that is Region A locked which puts it out of range for that vast majority of Australian/European viewers however there is a DVD available via Ebay that will play fine but it is a bare bones release with no extras which shouldn’t be a problem if you just want to see the movie.  The Bluray from Criterion however has great image quality in a 1.66:1 aspect ratio that still retains that film grain and clarity that one comes to expect from them or the other “premium” labels like Masters of Cinema or Arrow Academy.  The soundtrack is the original uncompressed mono and there is the following list of extras:

• an audio commentary by film noir specialists Alain Silver and James Ursini
• Video tribute by fellow director Alex Cox
• Excerpts from a 2005 documentary about the film’s screenwriter called “The Long Haul of A. I. Bezzerides”
• A 1998 documentary about the book’s author Mickey Spillane
• A video about the filming locations
• An alternate/altered ending
• Trailer
• A 20-page booklet on the film

Overall I highly recommend the film due to its rough gritty feel and cold war flavour.  In fact it would sit in my top 10 Film Noir that I have seen.  If you like Film Noir or films from this era you will certainly enjoy this out of the ordinary movie.  It stands out as being a film that is certainly worthy of occupying that little bit of space in your movie collection.

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* Thanks to the Film Noir Foundation’s, Noir City Magazine for the information on the Cold War Film Noir history.