If 75% of movies were like Robert Aldrich’s Kiss Me Deadly I could watch one a day and never get bored. Of course, with the long line of noir crime thrillers out there that wouldn’t be too hard to do, but at the same time this is just one more example of a kind of film that just isn’t being made any longer.
However, you can look at several of today’s films and see how films such as Kiss Me Deadly informed them. For starters, anyone that’s seen Quentin Tarantino’s Pulp Fiction has already seen a piece of Kiss Me Deadly in the form of the mysterious glowing briefcase. Now the contents of the two cases may be entirely different, but as a storytelling device it’s an example of how the greats of today never stray too far from what has worked throughout time in an effort to keep audiences on edge.
I also found a moment where the film’s lead character, the brute of a private detective Mike Hammer (played with perfect kinks, flaws and machismo by Ralph Meeker), slams a man’s fingers into a desk drawer until he gives up the information he’s looking for to be reminiscent of the scene in X-Men: First Class where Magneto (Michael Fassbender) extracts a metal filling from a man he’s interrogating. I doubt First Class-director Matthew Vaughn was mimicking this film with that moment as it isn’t necessarily a technique unique to this film, but when a scene works, it works because it has always worked and Kiss Me Deadly is full of such scenes, all the way up to its brutal ending that reads “The End” before ever wrapping its story up with a nice little bow.
Kiss Me Deadly is a crime thriller filled with cold-war era paranoia, but to actually take that description much further would spoil the fun. It’s based on novelist Mickey Spillane’s book of the same name and it immediately thrusts us into action as Mike Hammer picks up a frantic hitchhiker (played by a 29-year-old Cloris Leachman). What is she doing out in the middle of nowhere? Why is she half naked? The questions roll around in your head as the opening credits begin to roll as if painted on the highway. Shortly thereafter Mike and his passenger are kidnapped and driven off a cliff in his car. He survives. She doesn’t. What the hell is going on?
All of these questions will roll around in your head for much of the film’s 106 minute running time, which only adds to the paranoid confusion of its characters and the intensity of the film itself.
Presented in a 1.66:1 aspect ratio you will see some pillar boxing on the side of your widescreen television while watching what is an undoubted purist presentation of this 1955 feature. Grain is noticeable throughout so if that’s a problem for you perhaps springing for the DVD edition over the Blu-ray edition, where the picture clarity is likely to lessen the grain amount, may be your best option. However, for this kind of film I want that grit and grain. I want it to be as close to the original negative as it can get. For me, it only adds to the atmosphere.
As for the features, they begin with an audio commentary with film noir specialists Alain Silver and James Ursini and it is as thorough as you could ever want and touching on a lot of the factors that make an audience react to the way a lot of the action in the film is presented.
Additionally there are several interview pieces, one new and some pulled from previous material. Director Alex Cox (Repo Man), in an eccentric six-and-a-half-minute piece, talks about the film in what can only be referred to as a tribute, focusing on the film’s credit sequence, the differences between the film and the book and his general thoughts on the film overall. He even owns up to using the mysterious box idea for his own film, Repo Man, as well as comments on the sound effect used when the box is opened in Kiss Me Deadly, which, in my opinion, is one of the best uses of sound for absolute effect I have ever heard in a film.
There is a short excerpt from the 2005 documentary The Long Haul of A. I. Bezzerides, which focuses on the film’s screenwriter and how he had no problem changing everything from Spillane’s book. “I read the book and I thought it was awful,” Bezzerides says. “But I could see what I could do to fix it.” I haven’t read the script or the book, but I like the film the two pieces of literature ended up creating.
Next is a 40-minute documentary, “Mike Hammer’s Mickey Spillane,” by mystery writer and filmmaker Max Allan Collins (author of the book “Road to Perdition”), which was made in 1998 and was condensed and recut by Collins for this release. The documentary focuses on the life and career of Spillane with a focus on his Mike Hammer character and how he influenced years of other work and characters.
Finally, there’s what Criterion has dubbed a “Controversial alternate ending,” which cuts about a minute’s worth of footage that dramatically changes the fate of some of the film’s characters, though there are factors that could have you saying their ultimate fate has only been delayed. The back-story on this ending is detailed on this disc and as much as Aldrich seems to say it wasn’t intentional, I think the alternate ending gives some clues as to the lead character’s fate that may not have otherwise been immediately assumed.
Everything about this disc I enjoy from the tough guy protagonist, from the unflinching (but not gory) violence, the dark corners the story takes place and the paranoia at its core. Every time I come across a great film noir it’s a blessing and I love the opportunity to recommend one to my audience. This is one to check out, perhaps as a blind buy or as a Netflix rental and a purchase after that. For more you can read J. Hoberman’s essay from the 22-page illustrated booklet right here.
