Kiss Me Deadly (1955)

Private eye Mike Hammer (Ralph Meeker) is driving his convertible on a dark highway when he sees the almost naked Christina Bailey (Cloris Leachman) running down the middle of the road. He picks her up, but is soon forced off the road. Hammer is knocked unconscious, and Christina is killed. Both of them are put back in his car, which is then pushed off a cliff. Surviving, Hammer investigates, his curiosity aroused by an FBI warning to stay away. He finds Christina's roommate (Rodgers) and also meets a powerful gangster, Carl Evello (Paul Stewart), whose strings are being pulled by a mysterious higher power. Hammer knows he's on to something when his mechanic friend Nick (Nick Dennis) is killed and his secretary Velda (Maxine Cooper) kidnapped. Hammer himself is kidnapped but manages to escape, killing his tormentors. He eventually figures out that Christina swallowed a key that will lead to the "great Whatsit." Convincing a morgue attendant (by slamming the man's fingers in a drawer) to give him the key, Hammer later uses similar charm at a health club to acquire the box the key opens. In the end, we meet the chief villain, see another side to the mysterious roommate, and discover the contents of the box.

The results are, to put it mildly, explosive. One of the most brutal films ever made, Kiss Me Deadly enjoys a huge cult following. There's not a single really likable character to be found; everyone wants something, and the neanderthal Hammer barely gives people a chance to say no before he starts beating them up. Aldrich's direction heightens the script's misanthropy, shooting with extreme close-ups and at disorienting angles. Christina's murder is achieved with a pair of pliers, and all we see are a pair of bare legs dangling in midair. The murder of the mechanic is similarly jarring, the camera swooping in on his screaming face as a set of hydraulic jacks do their work. Hammer himself is knocked out no less than six times.

Aldrich was so concerned about possible reactions to all the violence that he wrote a defense of the film in the New York Herald Tribune. Kiss Me Deadly is shot in an unforgettably harsh fashion, visually underlining the paranoia and existential funk of the film noir world view as few other films have done. one of Aldrich's best films, it takes a number of noir elements to their most nihilistic extremes, leaving us in the violent, atomically threatened, Cold War encountered upon leaving the theater in the mid-1950s.

Performer, Character

Ralph Meeker, Mike Hammer

Albert Dekker, Dr. Soberin

Paul Stewart, Carl Evello

Maxine Cooper, Velda

Gaby Rodgers, Gabrielle (Lily Carver)

Wesley Addy, Pat Chambers

Juano Hernandez, Eddie Yeager

Nick Dennis, Nick

Cloris Leachman, Christina Bailey

Friday, Jack Lambert

Percy Helton, Morgue Doctor

Piker Strother, Martin

Production Credits

Producer and Director, Robert Aldrich

Screenwriter, A.I. Bezzerides based on the novel by Mickey Spillane Editor

Michael Luciano,

Cinematographer, Ernest Laszlo