Sexyloutak Absolutely the worst movie.

Jacomedi A Surprisingly Unforgettable Movie!

Casey Duggan It’s sentimental, ridiculously long and only occasionally funny

Tayyab Torres Strong acting helps the film overcome an uncertain premise and create characters that hold our attention absolutely.

ragrost I can't believe I've waited this long to see this noir classic, but as it concluded, I scratched my head and wondered, Had I seen this film before? Yes. Yes I had. Several times, and under several different titles. And they all contain the same protagonist: James Bond.It's hard to believe producer/director Robert Aldrich or screenwriter A.I. Bezzerides hadn't sued United Artists for copyright infringement. From the opening shot to the last frame, every Bond film has borrowed heavily from Kiss Me Deadly. And credit cannot go to the original author of the pulp novel, Mickey Spillane. He has outright panned the film and claims it has little or nothing to do with his book.Let's start with the opening credits, which begin a few minutes into the film: a full-screen crawl, ala Star Wars, but backwards and moving so quickly that it is near impossible to catch all the names on the screen. This must have been one of the first American films to toy with the opening credits in such a bold way, and I can see where Bond took that technique to another level.The torture scenes that follow are unusually explicit for a film of its time. The screams carry on like those in a David Lynch film. Once our protagonist, Mike Hammer, begins his investigation into the events of that fateful night, the similarities to our British spy multiply. He seems to have little regard for women in general, and in a poolside scene littered with a bunch of gangster heavies and their molls, Hammer is greeted by one of the swimsuit-clad ladies and within minutes they are locking lips. Hammer also appears to take pleasure in inflicting pain as evidenced by the scene where he crushes a man's hand in a desk drawer. It reminded me of the fight scene in the elevator with Sean Connery.The use of a jazz score, although not the first to do so, is very reminiscent of the early Bond films, and the scene with the nightclub singer probably inspired the Bond opening title sequence. Probably the most obvious similarity must be in the way the final scenes played out. At the 3/4 point in the film, Hammer's right hand gal, Velda, gets kidnapped by the henchmen, like all Bond girls do, and is held captive at a secret lair. Hammer tracks her down, breaks in, is held at gunpoint and witnesses the villain's unveiling of the coveted McGuffin, in this instance, a case with a supernatural glow and ominous sounds emanating from within. The villain ultimately gets what's coming to her, the place begins to explode, Bond, I mean Hammer, goes in search of his partner, whisks her away from the inferno and they both watch as the structure burns to the ground. At that point I was half expecting a parachute to drop out of the sky with a phone attached and M on the other line.

Sven-Erik Palmbring Based on a novel by Mickey Spillane in atomic shape this is a great thriller to watch. The story is build up around the search for the great "whatsit". The tempo is high in this dark and intriguing story. Ralph Meeker does a high class performance as Spillane's tough private eye, Mike Hammer. Add to that a wonderful lineup of great character-actors like: Albert Dekker, Strother Martin, Percy Helton, Jack Elam and Paul Stewart. There are also some amazing cars and beautiful women. Great entertainment, directed by one of the true masters of the trade: Robert Aldrich. As a bonus we can hear the man with the velvet voice, the unforgettable Nat Kong Cole sing.

FilmAlicia Note: This review contains significant SPOILERS. As I was watching for "Kiss Me Deadly" today for the first time, I thought, this is the movie that inspired the look and feel of "Chinatown" more than any other. I even felt that Meeker's matter-of-fact performance as Mike Hammer may have inspired the creation of Jake Gittes, and influenced Nicholson's performance. How about that scene with a very young Strother Martin? I had to go back and watch the film a couple of more times before I realized that's who was playing the truck driver who accidentally ran down one of the victims. The film came out 60 years ago, but it does feel very modern. Some absurdities such as the fact that Christina was able to conceal the key while she was in the mental hospital, since she probably would have been unable to carry it in her stomach for that long without her body getting rid of it in the usual manner. Also, when Mike Hammer went to the morgue to look at Christina's body, it had theoretically been weeks since her death (per Lt. Murphy, in the hospital room scene at the film's beginning) yet Christina's face still looked pretty much as it had when she was alive. Not that it matters, but, did we ever find out how Christina got involved in the plot (the plot within the film, not the film's plot) to begin with? And, of course, what was the nature of what was "in the box" which was so unstable that it caused a nuclear explosion when opened, but could be hauled around in just a metal container and outer case which appeared to be leather, not lead?Ralph Meeker looked like Pat Boone, a bit, but he sure didn't act like him. He was quite a compelling anti-hero, but he met his match in Maxine Cooper, as Velda. I couldn't take my eyes off her during her scenes, and loved her dialogue, especially her references to "the great Whatsit."Cloris Leachman, 60 years ago, was feisty and charming in her brief role. Gaby Rogers, as Lily Carver, came across as a strange and campy presence in the film, but it was that very unreality that made her memorable. We didn't need to see Albert Dekker's face at all, because he did most of his acting with his detached and not-quite-human voice, like the great radio announcer in the sky. An altogether weird, offbeat, and striking film noir, an obvious inspiration to other directors and to many other films, and a film that every noir buff should see. Regarding the film's meaning, I'll leave that for another time. These are just first impressions.

MisterWhiplash The opening of Kiss Me Deadly was something that I saw years before I saw the full film of Aldrich's Kiss Me Deadly, courtesy of Scorsese's American Movies doc. Just from this I could tell this movie had something "else" to this. In an incredible but shocking and, in its way, logical process, it shows a series of shots of a woman running down a road, stopping thanks to a car (driven by our PI, Mike Hammer), and then after a few moments of being safe with this man and the mystery not revealed yet... the car is stopped, feet come forward - and a dissolve over a woman's scream to a woman's legs being tortured. Then the perspective of Hammer, off to the side totally out of it, hearing men's voices discussing vague things involving what to do.As any Screen writing 101 teacher will tell you, getting the opening and the ending of a movie right is so crucial. Here, this movie has both, and the ending involves that briefcase (yeah, that one, thanks Quentin for the reference). But what Aldrich and his collaborators do here is interesting: if you hear on the interview on the Criterion DVD, the movie isn't a close adaptation of the book - in fact it deviates a bit. The book doesn't have the whole aspect of the nuclear secrets. It was just another story of Hammer getting into violent s*** and kicking ass and taking names in the midst of his story.Luckily, Aldrich also has a fine lead in Ralph Meeker, who can play tough and take-no-s*** just fine (he never 'made it' as a leading man, but he shows up in a number of memorable movies over the years from Alrdich, Kubrick and Lang). In this story Hammer is out to find out what the hell happened to him that night, who that dame was (played by a young Cloris Leachman by the way), and why he was set up to die in a car crash. He gets help from a mechanic and his secretary, but of course Hammer also has to contend with the FBI. Why are they involved? Oh, you'll find out.The quality of the writing, however much it eschews Spillane's text or not, helps Aldrich to get to what he needs with this story. But it's such a rich film visually, too. He chooses his shots carefully, he doesn't cut to quickly when a key piece of info comes up (i.e. the first time any nuclear talk comes up between Hammer and an FBI guy), and how he follows people and then proceeds to beat them up. Or just talks to the woman by his side in the story (the one who... well, don't want to spoil it just yet).It's the kind of no-nonsense noir I wish I had seen on a big screen first. It's made for that, and I imagine if a film society or retro-house put it on a double bill with something like The Big Heat, also featuring Meeker in a much different role, it'd grow some hair on a man's chest! Seriously, this is strong stuff of the period, which also somehow manages to push the envelope of what you could show at the time by what it doesn't show (how is Christina tortured for example - we don't know, and that makes it worse). It's a director taking B-movie pulp and elevating it with art and craft and a vision. And grit. And blood.