Rating: NR
Genre:
Thriller
Release Date: 06/19/2001
SubTitles: English/French/Espanol
Dubbed: English
Sound: 5.1/1
Run Time: 106 Minutes
Distributor/Studio: MGM
Regarded by many critics as the ultimate
film noir, and by many more as the finest movie adaptation of a book by
Mickey Spillane,
Kiss Me Deadly stars
Ralph Meeker as
Spillane's anti-social private eye
Mike Hammer. While driving down a lonely road late one evening,
Hammer picks up a beautiful blonde hitchhiker (
Cloris Leachman), dressed in nothing but a raincoat. At first,
Hammer assumes that the incoherent girl is an escaped lunatic; his mind is changed for him when he and the girl are abducted by two thugs. The men torture the girl to death as the semiconscious
Hammer watches helplessly. He himself escapes extermination when the murderers' car topples off a cliff and he is thrown clear. Seeking vengeance,
Hammer tries to discover the secret behind the girl's murder. Among those who cross his path in the film's tense, tingling 105 minutes are a slimy gangster (
Paul Stewart), a turncoat scientist (
Albert Dekker), and the dead woman's sexy roommate (
Gaby Rodgers). All clues lead to a mysterious box -- the "Great Whatsit," as
Hammer's secretary Velda (
Maxine Cooper) describes it. Both the box and Velda are stolen by the villains, at which point
Hammer discovers that the "Whatsit" contains radioactive material of awesome powers. The apocalyptic climax is doubly devastating because we're never quite certain if
Hammer survives (he doesn't narrate the story, as was the case in most
Mike Hammer films and TV shows). Director
Robert Aldrich and scriptwriter
Jack Moffit transcend
Kiss Me Deadly's basic genre trappings to produce a one-of-a-kind melodrama for the nuclear age.
~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
;)
