 "Great Film Noir" | 2009-10-15 |
| - Reviewed By goofball1200 |
Simply put, if you're into film noir, this is a movie to be revisited, or seen for the first time. No blockbuster actors, but everyone played their part well. A rather gritty movie considering it came out in the mid-50's. If you love nostalgia and are familiar with the LA area, you'll love the scenes shot on location.
What's always a good quality in any movie is a story you can follow, which you have here. It's the typical noir where a lot of smoking & drinking goes on, yet everyone's dressed up.
In short, a PI picks up a hitchhiker (Cloris Leechman!) that escaped from an insane asylum. She knows information that everyone's trying to find out. It's all about a box in a gym locker.
I found it especially interesting, recognizing a lot of the supporting cast (I watched a lot as a kid on Saturdays with dad). I also have a huge interest in Los Angeles past, so seeing the trolly car going up the hill, hotels downtown not there anymore, etc etc, was a big treat.
If film noir is your thing, don't pass this one up. Great stuff!
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 "Sordid and dislikable" | 2009-09-16 |
| - Reviewed By User: A1X054KUYG5V |
The Bottom Line:
It may seem odd to criticize a film for being sordid when that's almost certainly the feel it was going for, but Kiss Me Deadly's incredible misanthropy and misogynism just kinda made me want to take a shower; also hampered by the fact that the central character of Mike Hammer never manages to be very interesting, Kiss Me Deadly is ultimately worth watching more for its influence on later films (e.g. Pulp Fiction, Raiders of the Lost Ark) than for its actual worth as a movie.
2.5/4 |
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 ""Va-va-voom!" straight to the Apocalypse" | 2009-06-05 |
| - Reviewed By birdalone |
Some 50+ years later, this blistering film noir remains wonderfully subversive & disturbingly prescient. Its unflinchingly bleak & sardonic vision of an ostensibly civilized world sliding headfirst into gleeful barbarism rings even more true today, when anti-intellectualism & brute force are celebrated in public & political life. No wonder discerning French critics lauded it!
Ralph Meeker is perfect as Mike Hammer, the best excuse for a hero his world can muster -- a misogynistic, self-serving thug who relishes any opportunity to intimidate & humiliate others, all in the name of a fast & sleazy buck. (Although he clearly enjoys beating up others even if there isn't any cash in sight.) Anyone with the slightest inclination towards culture & basic human decency is doomed in this world. Hammer has no use for ambiguity, complexity, or depth. "Force is all they understand" -- and all he wants to understand.
There's an inexorable ferocity & drive to this film, as unlucky bystanders drop like flies & Hammer draws closer to the conclusion of his case. But unlike the traditional hero, the deeper he goes into the mystery he's struggling to unravel, the worse he makes things. And in the end, as the deadly Maguffin winds up in the very creepy hands of the vacuous but vicious Lily, we see that the proudly ignorant will not only inherit the earth, they'll probably destroy it, too.
Mickey Spillane fans won't be happy with this film -- Spillane himself hated it -- but director Rabert Aldrich has crafted a brilliant & savage parable for our times, one that seems all too accurate with each passing day. Highly recommended! |
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| "Taking The Hammer to L.A." | 2008-11-10 |
| - Reviewed By User: A8WZ4YFQB77HC |
Mike Hammer is transplanted to the left coast in this overrated but entertaining cult classic. Rather than being a two-fisted gumshoe, here Mike does sleazy divorce work and practically pimps out Velda. The picture starts off strong, but sinks into a very convoluted plot. The thrills come from the ahead-of-it's-time violence -- some of the most sadistic of which is handed out by Hammer. The picture also takes the cynisism of 50s noir and extends that to the political climate with it's much vaunted apocalyptic ending. This seems to lay the groundwork for 70s thrillers like Parallax View and Three Days of the Condor with their paranoia and suspicion.
Meeker's okay, but the picture might play better if the other women were as good as Cloris Leachman in the opening scenes. |
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| "Kiss Me Deadly is Film Noir at Its Best." | 2008-10-13 |
| - Reviewed By -booklover- |
American film director Robert Aldrich (1918-1983) is synonymous with great films like What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? (1962), Hush...Hush, Sweet Charlotte (1964), and The Dirty Dozen (1967). Based on the Mickey Spillane pulp mystery bestseller of the same name, Aldrich's 1955 film noir classic, Kiss Me Deadly, stars Ralph Meeker as lowlife Los Angeles gumshoe, Mike Hammer, on a quest for "something big." The fact that this B movie was the inspiration for later films including Spielberg's Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981), Alex Cox's Repo Man (1984), Tarantino's Pulp Fiction (1994), and David Lynch's Lost Highway (1997) is reason enough to add Kiss Me Deadly to one's film collection.
As film noir, Kiss Me Deadly is so dark it is arguably nihilistic. It opens with a young woman, Christina (Cloris Leachman), hitchhiking in her bare feet and a trench coat along a lonely road. After catching a ride with hard-boiled detective Mike Hammer, she is tortured to death by thugs fifteeen minutes later. Soon anti-hero Hammer finds himself outside the comfort zone of the sleazy divorce cases he typically investigates, and at the center of a international intrigue. The darkly-sinister, fast-paced thriller ends with an over-the-top atomic blaze. Meeker carries the film, and this fully-restored DVD edition features both the original ending and the alternate ending of Kiss Me Deadly. Highly recommended.
G. Merritt |
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| "Film noir, yes, Mickey Spillane, no" | 2008-05-12 |
| - Reviewed By User: A3GD9BKIUT3I89 |
| I admit to liking this movie. Spillane hated it and what Aldrich did to the character of Mike Hammer, turning from a violent angel of retribution to simply a violent and not too bright thug. The ending (or endings if you like) have to be the strangest ever for a film noir. |
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