NFR Project: 'Kiss Me Deadly' (1955)

 

NFR Project: “Kiss Me Deadly”

Dir: Robert Aldrich

Scr: A.I. Bezzerides

Pho: Ernest Laszlo

Ed: Michael Luciano

Premiere: May 18, 1955

106 min.

What in the hell is going on here? It’s a two-fisted, nihilistic film noir with plenty of action and not a lot of common sense. But it doesn’t matter, we’re having too much fun.

It’s based lightly on Mickey Spillane’s 1952 popular pulp novel. Mike Hammer (Ralph Meeker) is a bullyboy and a sleazy, salacious detective (he pimps his loving girlfriend Velda – and himself -- out for divorce cases). One night he encounters, running down the highway, a weeping, distracted girl in a trench coat and nothing else (Cloris Leachman’s film debut). She jumps into his sports car and off they go to the sound of Nat ‘King’ Cole.

She refuses to tell him what the problem is, and commences philosophizing. Bad guys jump upon them; the girl is tortured to death while Hammer lays by, helpless. Then he and the girl’s body are jammed into his car and pushed off a cliff and set aflame. And that’s just the first ten minutes.

Naturally, Mike is pissed. Once he recovers, he begins his search for the girl’s murderers. This leads him on the trail of various gangsters, and a femme fatale Lily (Gaby Rodgers). The trouble seems to be about a box of some kind, containing something dangerous and unearthly.

Mike gets to beat a lot of people up, which he enjoys. Velda is in danger, Mike goes to save her. There are character actors galore here: Strother Martin! Jack Elam! Even in inimitable Percy Helton in perhaps his greatest role as an evil coroner. Interestingly, though Hammer is supposed to be a working-class detective, many of the clues in the film are triggered by or near classical music, poetry, and art. Hammer is out of his element, so much so that he can’t foresee nuclear annihilation when it’s in his hot little hands.

The femme fatale Lily turns out to be someone else entirely. She shoots her co-conspirator, and then he shoots Mike. And she’s just got to open that box . . .

Spoiler Alert: I had watched the old, shorter ending of this film for 30 years – in which the last thing we see is the beach house exploding. This time out, I snagged a copy of the ORIGINAL ending. In it, Hammer and Velda escape the burning beach house. Hammer, though gunshot, stands in the surf clinging to Velda as they watch the place burn down. They survive! This certainly puts a new spin on the whole project. What was deemed to be a nihilistic statement about mankind was really a bad edit. It’s considerably more upbeat than before.

The NFR Project is one writer’s attempt to review all the films listed in the National Film Registry in chronological order. Next time: Marty.