Kiss Me Deadly [DVD] [1955]
A terrific film noir full of skewed camera angles and mysterious whose-shoes-are-those shots, Kiss Me Deadly is about as dark and exciting as noir gets. A young woman (Cloris Leachman) in bare feet and a trench coat throws herself into the traffic to flag down help and the car she stops belongs to detective Mike Hammer. Not even 15 minutes into the film and there’s already been a murder, a mysterious letter, an attempt to kill Hammer and, of course, a warning to stay out of it. Hammer, tired of lowlife divorce cases, smells something big and can’t let it go.
Mike Hammer is a detective so cool he can win a fight with nothing more than a box of popcorn as a weapon; he knows his opera singers as well as his amateur prize-fighters and he makes the ladies swoon–but he’s far from a conventional hero. In fact, he’s emphatically not a nice guy; Hammer happily whores out his secretary-girlfriend Velma to cinch up those divorce cases and has a penchant for slamming other people’s fingers in drawers. Even the bad guys know he’s a sleazebag (“What’s it worth to you to turn your considerable talents back to the gutter you crawled out of?”). Ralph Meeker plays Hammer’s ambivalence brilliantly, swinging easily between sexy and just plain mean. –Ali Davis
Review by Mr. C. R. Martyr for Kiss Me Deadly [DVD] [1955]
(4 / 5)
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Over thirty years ago, long, long before Sky had tied up new releases and the quality back catalogue, a film fan could educate him or herself through the simple expedient of watching terrestrial tv. Most nights from about 11 pm BBC2 was showing classics of British, world or US cinema. That’s how I first stumbled on “Kiss Me Deadly” – a bored teenager flicking through the very limited range of channels available. That turned out to be one of the most memorable film experiences of my life. Its been called the best film noir ever. Its fair to say that’s probably wrong, but misses the point. As a late example (1955) it represents the apogee of film noir and to my mind you really can’t begin to understand it until you understand the US in the fifties – affluent and expansive but paranoid and terrified. That’s assuming (and this is apparently a matter of debate) that this unique film, and in particular its conclusion, came about in the way the film makers intended.
There’s no real point in describing the plot – it’s as unfathomable as most of the film noir genre – it’s the style that counts. Then, three quarters of the way through, the film throws a real twist at you, leading inexorably to the final beachhouse scene. At that point, conventionality goes out of the window – along with the world and everything else…
Review by for Kiss Me Deadly [DVD] [1955]
(5 / 5)
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On the surface this is a well paced thriller from the dangerous days of the cold war. The bad guys and the good guys all play hardball and there’s plenty of action on the way to a truly apocalyptic ending. That’s reason enough for watching, but if you look just under the surface there’s more. The traditional sex-roles are held up to the light – male “toughness” and female “gentleness” – and both are found wanting in a world that doesn’t forgive any mistakes.Ralp Meeker’s Mike Hammer is as close as you’ll get to the the nasty original that Mickey Spillane wrote. (You keep thinking “this guy’s the hero?”.) But the film belongs to Gaby Rodgers, who was never in anything else, but should have got an Oscar for this – wow.It’s in black and white – but so are many of the best movies.
Review by S. Notarangelo for Kiss Me Deadly [DVD] [1955]
(5 / 5)
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‘Kiss Me Deadly’ has to be one of the most exceptional film noirs of cinematic history. If ever there was a crime movie at its toughest, this is it!Made in 1955 by director Robert Aldrich, this is, with the exception of ‘Chinatown’ and ‘Double Indemnity’, THE film noirs to end all film noirs (the film was actually made at the close of the film noir period in Hollywood). Starring a thuggish Ralph Meeker as private investigator Mike Hammer, the story is based on Mickey Spillane’s pulp fiction story about a P.I who gets involved with a woman accidently and becomes caught up in events that spiral out of control. The thing that drives the story along is his hunt for the mysterious ‘Pandora’s Box’, an ambiguous object that is only revealed at the end of the film, when Mike’s search ends up further than he would have liked.Shot with crazy, awkward camera angles, and a startlingly vivid opening to the movie, ‘KMD’ not only summed up what film noir movies were all about, it also influenced a whole generation after it. Even Quentin Tarantino has borrowed from the film, when the glowing briefcase John Travolta opens in ‘Pulp Fiction’ harks back to the glowing box Mike Hammer opens in this film. And this was a movie shot with a low budget and unrecognisable actors in under three weeks!!If you’re a fan of crime thrillers both old and new, you must purchase ‘KMD’. From its beginning to its end (probably one of the best endings ever filmed), this has to be seen to be appreciated. This is one of my favourite films ever because of its striking realism and detail – A MUST BUY!!!
Review by The BlackFerret for Kiss Me Deadly [DVD] [1955]
(5 / 5)
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Micky Spillane was not Doestoyevski, so you’d expect films of his detective fiction to be far from Oscar-winning works.
In this case,Ralph Meeker is perfect. As Mike Hammer, he is convincingly, by turns, slow on the uptake, brutal, brutalised, and unable to resist the notion the femme fatale, stunningly portrayed by Gaby Rogers, could just be innocent.
There’s enough style and styialisation to stay with you and your remeberances of this film forever. Thankfully,it doesn’t pad the film out, and never gets in the way of the action.
Robert Aldrich made some astonishly good films, and some good bad or indifferent that nobody understood. None of that need trouble you here-this is good v evil,black v white, but you won’t cotton on to which is which until the very climax.
And that IS a climax!! I won’t spoil it for you-it’s just too intriguing a film not to own.
Review by Chaka Whyte for Kiss Me Deadly [DVD] [1955]
(5 / 5)
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This film will stun you with how many immatations it has spawned. The stylised speech the scenes where the violence is just merely suggested now shown to you with popcorn dropping photography. i feel that to truly grasp the impact of this film you have to understand the times, the culture and the politics of the era then you will see why this film is considered the best film noir. I would recommend that you buy it or rent it , if you love the film noir genre and do not have this film you are missing a treat