Kiss Me Deadly (1955)

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Kiss Me Deadly (1955) is a film noir drama produced and directed by Robert Aldrich starring Ralph Meeker. The screenplay was written by A.I. Bezzerides, based on the Mickey Spillane Mike Hammer mystery novel Kiss Me, Deadly. Kiss Me Deadly is often considered a classic of the noir genre. The film grossed $726,000 in the United States and a total of $226,000 overseas.

Kiss Me Deadly marked the film debuts of both actresses Cloris Leachman and Maxine Cooper.

Plot

Ralph Meeker plays Mike Hammer, a tough Los Angeles private eye who is just slightly less brutal and corrupt than the crooks he chases. One evening, Hammer gives a ride to Christina (Cloris Leachman), an attractive hitchhiker on a lonely country road, who has escaped from the nearby lunatic asylum. Thugs waylay them and force his car to crash. When Hammer returns to semi-consciousness, he hears Christina being tortured until she dies. Hammer, both for vengeance and in hopes that "something big" is behind it all, decides to pursue the case.

The twisting plot takes Hammer to the apartment of Lily Carver (Gaby Rodgers), a sexy, waif-like blond who is posing as the dead Christina's ex-room mate. Lily tells Hammer she has gone into hiding and asks Hammer to protect her. But she is duplicitous, and is after a mysterious box that, she believes, has contents worth a fortune.

"The great whatsit" (as Hammer's assistant Velda (Maxine Cooper) calls it) at the center of Hammer's quest is a small, mysterious valise that is hot to the touch and contains a dangerous, shining substance. It comes to represent the 1950s Cold War fear and nuclear paranoia about the atomic bomb that permeated American culture.

Later, at a deserted beach house, Hammer finds Lily with her evil companion, Dr. Soberin. Velda is their hostage, tied up in a bedroom. Soberin and Lily are vying for the contents of the box. Lily shoots Soberin, believing that she can keep the mysterious contents for herself. As she slyly opens the case, it is ultimately revealed to be stolen radionuclide material, which in an apocalyptic final scene apparently reaches explosive criticality when the box ("Pandora's Box") is fully opened. Horrifying sounds are emitted from the nuclear material as Lily bursts into flames.

Alternate ending

The original American release of the film shows Hammer and Velda escaping from the burning house at the end, running into the ocean as the words "The End" come over them on the screen. Sometime after its first release, the ending was crudely altered on the film's original negative, removing over a minute's worth of shots where Hammer and Velda escape and superimposing the words "The End" over the burning house. This implied that Hammer and Velda perished in the atomic blaze, and was often interpreted to represent the End of the World. In 1997, the original conclusion was restored. The DVD release has the correct original ending, and offers the now-discredited (but influential) truncated ending as an extra. The movie is described as "the definitive, apocalyptic, nihilistic, science-fiction film noir of all time - at the close of the classic noir period."

Differences from the novel

The original novel, while providing much of the plot, is about a mafia conspiracy and does not feature espionage and the nuclear suitcase, elements added to the film version by the scriptwriter, A.I. Bezzerides.

It further subverted Spillane's book by portraying the already tough Hammer as a narcissistic bully, the darkest of anti-hero private detectives in the film noir genre. He apparently makes most of his living by blackmailing adulterous husbands and wives, and he takes an obvious sadistic pleasure in violence, whether he's beating up thugs sent to kill him, breaking an informant's treasured record collection, or roughing up a coroner who's slow to part with a piece of information. Bezzerides wrote of the script: "I wrote it fast because I had contempt for it ... I tell you Spillane didn't like what I did with his book. I ran into him at a restaurant and, boy, he didn't like me."

Directed by Robert Aldrich - Produced by Robert Aldrich - Written by Story: Mickey Spillane - Screenplay: A. I. Bezzerides - Starring Ralph Meeker, Albert Dekker, Paul Stewart, Cloris Leachman - Cinematography Ernest Laszlo - Distributed by United Artists - Release date May 18, 1955 - Running time 106 minutes, USA: 104 minutes - Country United States - Language English - Budget $410,000 (est.)

From: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kiss_Me_Deadly