After looking at five films made outside the U.S., it’s time to look at an American film, one of my all-time favorites, Robert Aldrich’s noir classic Kiss Me Deadly. What makes this film a cut above most of the genre is the fact that Aldrich and screenwriter A.I. Bezzerides were aiming to “shake-up” things up a bit by mixing elements of other genres into the pot, making it a film than can “work” on multiple levels. It has all the elements of film noir, but it also throws in science fiction and Cold War paranoia. The screenplay keeps us guessing right up to the very end what the “prize” is, and along the way, people are willing to kill for it—or be killed by it.
Kiss Me Deadly is loosely based on a story by Mickey Spillane, creator of the hardboiled detective Mike Hammer. In the film, Ralph Meeker is cast in the role of Hammer; Meeker doesn’t exactly have a lot of “personality” as an actor, but he is perfectly cast here. This version of Hammer is sardonic, self-absorbed, an ogler of women, thoughtless of others and isn’t apt to take advice from anyone but himself. On the other hand, this Hammer can sense danger before it happens, has skills of self-defense that are “mysterious” because they usually occur off-screen, and has remarkable detective skills that his police detective adversary admits to: “He can sniff out information like no one I ever saw”—especially if there is some money in it.
The first thing we see in Kiss Me Deadly is a woman (Cloris Leachman) wearing nothing but a trench coat running down a lonely highway in the dead of night.
She sees the headlights of a car speeding down the road, and fearing it will pass her like the others she waives her arms in the middle of the road. The driver of the car barely misses her, and in trying to swerve around her, the car’s engine stalls on the side of the road. Here she meets Mike Hammer (Meeker), a private detective, who is none too happy about this interruption.
As a reluctant Hammer agrees to give her a ride into town, the opening credits immediately inform us that the director is aiming to give the viewer a different experience: as they scroll upwards, it might take a less perceptive viewer a moment to realize that they have to be read in “reverse.”
We learn that the police are looking for the woman, who has escaped from an asylum; they had taken all of her clothes, which explains the trench coat. Hammer helps her evade the police by posing as her husband.
She tells Hammer she was being held against her will because she possessed knowledge about something dangerous, but could not tell anyone what it is. Hammer muses “What you don’t know can’t hurt you,” but as the film progressives, we see that he has a difficult time of keeping to that adage.
They stop at a gas station, and the woman (who we learn calls herself Christina) asks the attendant to drop off a letter for her. Christina provides some unflattering commentary about Hammer’s self-involved character; she asks him if he likes poetry (of course not). She exhorts him to make it to the bus station and “forget” about her, but if they don’t make it in time, then “remember” her. Then suddenly a car blocks their way and forces them off the road; next we hear Christina screaming as if being tortured. They are in a room, with Hammer unconscious on the floor, and Christina's feet seen dangling from the ceiling.
They are both put in Hammer’s car, which is pushed over a cliff.
However, Hammer survives, as we find a nurse and his secretary/assistant, Velda (Maxine Cooper) hovering over him while he lies in a hospital bed. “Where are you when I need you?” he asks her. “You never need me when I’ m around” she replies.
After he gets out of the hospital he is taken to a police station, where he is asked about what happened that night. He isn’t particularly cooperative with the details, and his interrogators attempt to shame him with information about his line of work, which is in the divorce racket, with Velda doubling as bait for husbands.
A police detective acquaintance, Lt. Murphy (Wesley Addy), tries to persuade Hammer to tell them what he knows and step aside, but Hammer wants to know what’s in it for him. He actually knows only what Christina told him, which was very little. Hammer suspects the case is “big,” and there might be some money in it.
Hammer goes to a mechanic friend, Nick (Nick Dennis) to pick up his car, but is told that it is a complete wreck; he is also told that a couple of tough characters were looking for him. Hammer returns to his apartment, where he discovers that the lock was picked, but no one is inside. Velda shows up and it is clear that she has feeling for him that he doesn’t reciprocate. Murphy then shows up; thinking no one is inside, he picks the lock and helps himself inside. He tells Hammer that he is revoking his private investigators license and permit to carry a gun because he won’t talk and he can’t be trusted to keep his nose out of “police business.”
He threatens to throw Hammer in jail if he catches him “snooping around,” already disturbed by the fact that Hammer knows about the mysterious disappearance of a science editor of a newspaper possibly connected with the case.
So far we know next to nothing about what this is all about, save that one person has been killed, Hammer was supposed to be killed, and that two toughs are looking for him, and that the police don’t want him “snooping around.” Hammer, however, is one of those people the more you say “no” to, the more he wants to find out “why not.” Velda has been doing some leg work for him, finding out that Christina had held in the hospital for questioning, not because she was “crazy.” Velda tries to seduce Hammer, but he sends her off on a “job” seducing the husband of a client.
Out investigating a tip, Hammer is followed by some thug and shows us the one of those things he is good at: beating the crap out of people.
He then arrives at the apartment of a man who knows Christina, Ray (Mort Marshall), his face appearing as if someone was trying to get information out him.
He knows nothing, but gives Hammer the address where she had lived. The only "clue" Hammer finds is a book of poetry that Christina mentioned, which he takes with him. Christina had a roommate, Lily, who had moved out a few days prior; he is told secretly that she was afraid of being killed too, and is given her new address. Hammer finds that apartment, and Lily (Gaby Rodgers) lets him in, but holding a gun to him.
She seems a bit flighty, telling a story about how she and Christina lived a simple life until people came to question Christina and took her away. Hammer tells her to get in touch with him if she wants to get “even” with Christina’s killers.
When Hammer returns home, he receives a mysterious call warning him to forget about “everything” and, if he does, things will return to normal—including a new car. The next morning there is a brand new car out of front, but Hammer is naturally suspicious, and discovers that dynamite has been attached to the starter, and at Nick’s garage a bomb is removed from the speedometer. So far we have learned why Hammer is of such concern to the police, and that the criminals have a bad habit of underestimating him.
Returning to the office, Hammer tells Velda they are dropping the divorce cases to pursue something “big,” or at least that is what Hammer thinks this all about. There has to be some money in this if people are trying so hard to keep his nose out of it, even to kill him to do so. He wants Velda to find out more about Christina. Ray, Christina’s friend whose face was beaten in, left a few names for Hammer to check out. One of them Velda discovered has already died in an “accident,” a boxer named Kowalski. His former trainer (Juano Hernandez) has already had a visit from two toughs and won’t tell Hammer anything because he likes “breathing.”
But Hammer finds out from Murphy that the two toughs are in the employ of a local crime boss, Carl Evello (Paul Stewart).
Hammer arrives at Evello’s estate, and it is full of girls in swimsuits which suits his womanizing instincts. He invites himself to a swim, and Evello sends his two toughs after him in the dressing room. One them is immediately rendered unconscious in a way we do not see, but sends the other running out in a state of shock.
Evello “invites” Hammer in his house for a “talk.” Evello, admits he has underestimated Hammer, but warns him he has no idea what he is looking for, and should keep his nose out of it. Hammer tries to get some money out of him to get him off the case. Evello realizes that Hammer thinks this is something “big” and intends to find out what exactly this “secret” is worth to up the price, so he won’t make an offer, suggesting that he intends on making sure that Hammer stops “breathing” at some point.
Hammer pays a visit to the other name on Ray’s list, a washed-up opera singer named Carmen. With a little "persuasion"--breaking a valuable record--he discovers that a “friend”—presumably Christina—who has been killed had been tasked to hide something small but dangerous, but he does not know anything else.
Hammer then goes to Lily’s apartment, where he finds her hiding out because the toughs were looking for her. He hides her in his car as they drive off. He drops her off at his apartment. He then goes to Nick’s garage, where he discovers that someone had disconnected the jack while Nick was working under a car, killing him, the likely reason that he had been asking questions for Hammer.
Velda warns Hammer that it is not
worth getting killed for the great “what’s it.” She reveals that through Ray
she came across a new name, Dr. Soberin, and she is sent off to find him. Hammer goes to a bar and gets passed-out
drunk over Nick’s death. He is awoken by the bartender, who has just been told by some mysterious stranger to inform him that Velda is being held hostage.
He heads to the gas station, where the attendant tells him the letter Christina gave him was addressed to “Mike.” He returns to his office to find the letter, which merely says “Remember Me.”
The two toughs are also there, and they accost him and take him to a beach house, where after an aborted attempt to escape is tied-up to a bed.
While he lies there, he hears a new voice, but cannot see his face; this person laments that the world can’t be satisfied with gold or drugs, but with more “fabulous” things. Hammer will die, but he can save Velda by providing some information. Hammer is given a truth serum to help him “remember” what Christina told, but of course he doesn’t know anything. Supposedly under the influence of the drug—it is possible it hasn’t worked at all—Hammer just says some mumbo-jumbo that makes no sense.
Hammer, having slipped his hands from the knots, tricks Evello into coming closer to him and knocks him out; he also tricks one of the toughs inside the bedroom, and he inadvertently stabs Evello who is now lying on the bed. The other tough hears a loud, high-pitched scream, and finds both Evello and the first tough dead, and Hammer gets away in a car.
Returning home, he finds Lily in some clothes that Velda had brought her before she was kidnapped. Reading something out of the book he had taken from Christina’s apartment, he discovers a passage that illuminates the “remember me” message. What he is looking for is a “thing,” and small enough to hide.
He goes to the morgue where her body is, and the mortician reveals that he did find something “small” on her person, but for a “price.” Hammer gives him some money, but he wants more, and Hammer ends the bartering in his usual imitable way.
He finds out that it is a key for a locker at a fitness club, and drives to it with Lily. He finds out it belongs to someone named Nicholas Raymondo. There is a small metal box in the locker that is hot; he opens it a little and a bright light is seen accompanied by a sound like a scream.
He immediately closes the box and warns the attendant not to let anyone have it. Lily has disappeared. He sees Lt. Murphy, who tells him that the real Lily was fished out of the water days ago, and that the person passing herself off as Lily is an imposter. He also sees that Hammer has a severe burn on his wrist; he warns him that what is in the box has something to do with nuclear energy, which is why everything is so “secret.”
He convinces Hammer to give him the key, and Murphy expresses contempt for Hammer's foolishness in allowing Velda to be kidnapped; that is his “problem.”
Meanwhile, the gym club attendant has been killed and the locker broken into, and the box taken. Hammer goes to Ray’s place again, where he is told the man Velda had found was an art gallery owner named Mist. When he arrives at the gallery, Mist has apparently taken sleeping pills before he can tell Hammer where she is. The name of Dr. Soberin comes up again,
and he finds a number in an address book, and Hammer suspects Velda is being held at the beach house he was taken to before.
At the beach house, Dr. Soberin and Gabrielle (the phony Lily) are discussing what is in the box. He knows, but she doesn’t. He warns her that it is a Pandora’s Box that must not be opened, but taken away to be disposed of, but the greedy Gabrielle believes it something “valuable,” and if she can’t get half of it, she wants all of it.
She shoots Soberin, with Hammer arriving moments later. Clearly the “femme fatale” of the film, she shoots him too when, for once, he foolishly let's his guard down.
Gabrielle opens the box, and in a scene that predates The Raiders of the Lost Ark, she is consumed by the blazing light coming out of it (apparently radiation), and she is set afire.
Hammer revives himself, finds Velda and they escape the now burning beach house which appears to be blowing up in a nuclear fireball.
The film ends with Hammer and Velda watching this, but whether they survive is not clear.
What exactly is the message Kiss Me Deadly supposed to be conveying, since it clearly has more on its mind than a simple detective story? The 1950s was the time of the “red scare” and the McCarthy hearings, blacklisting, the so-called “Cold War” in full-swing, and of course fears of nuclear war. It was also a time when the fascination with “science” and otherworldly possibilities grasped the imagination. Aldrich crafted a film which explored many of these elements in a completely believable way that made a statement on the folly of human fascination with and the creation of potentially destructive forces it had little control over.
Government and law enforcement secrecy about what they were looking for only added to the curiosity of Hammer; had Lt. Murphy given him some idea of the danger, he might not have been so eager to be so contrary to common sense. Aldrich keeps the suspense going with each violent twist: there must be something that must be so important that it must be kept secret to justify all of this. And the film delivers what it promises; even though we still don’t really know what exactly is in that box and what was its purpose, it is clear that it was a box that no one should have opened.
Aldrich would make a number of interesting films, like Vera Cruz, Whatever Happened to Baby Jane, The Dirty Dozen, The Killing of Sister George, and The Longest Yard. His last film, All the Marbles, is actually in my opinion the best film about professional wrestling that I have seen. But Kiss Me Deadly, despite being one of his early films, can be said to be near his creative peak, crafting a film that stands repeat viewings to fully grasp its many idiosyncrasies, and the way it manages to speak about the paranoia of its time in way that never fails to mesmerize the viewer.
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