Kiss Me Deadly Movie Review 1955

Aldrich's adaptation of Mickey Spillane's private eye tale takes pulp literature high concept. Meeker, as Mike Hammer, is a self-interested rough-and-tumble all-American dick (detective, that is). When a woman to whom he happened to give a ride is found murdered, he follows the mystery straight into a nuclear conspiracy. Aldrich, with tongue deftly in cheek, styles a message through the medium; topsy-turvy camera work and rat-a-tat-tat pacing tell volumes about Hammer, the world he orbits, and that special '50s kind of paranoia. Now a cult fave, it's considered to be the American grandaddy to French New Wave.

Distribution

Facets Multimedia, Inc., 1517 W. Fullerton Ave., Chicago, IL 60614, Phone: (773)281-9075, Toll-free: 800-331-6197, Fax: (773)929-5437, Email: sales@facets.org, URL: http://www.facets.org

Available on VHS, DVD
Running time 105 minutes.

Cast and Crew

Genres

Private Eyes, Film Noir, Mike Hammer

Screenplay

A.I. Bezzerides

Cast

Ralph Meeker, Albert Dekker, Paul Stewart, Wesley Addy, Cloris Leachman, Strother Martin, Marjorie Bennett, Jack Elam, Maxine Cooper, Gaby Rodgers, Nick Dennis, Jack Lambert, Percy Helton

Cinematography

Ernest Laszlo

Director

Robert Aldrich

Music

Frank DeVol

Producer

United Artists, Robert Aldrich

Awards

Natl. Film Reg. 1999.