Kiss Me Deadly (1955) : A great mystery and noir with a mix of sci-fi.
Kiss Me Deadly (1955) is a strange and gritty noir that mixes genres to create an intriguing mystery. It has a main character based out of the famous novels that were so popular those days, written by Mickey Spillane. The detective Mike Hammer (played by Ralph Meeker) is the sort of detective that encapsulates the characteristics of a hard boiled detective. He can go to extreme ends to get the information he needs. There is a combination of softness with a rough and tough character that is blended wonderfully in this world of mystery. It is a film that has inspired many other films like from Raiders of the lost ark to Tarantino’s pulp fiction. It also has influenced filmmakers of the French New Wave like Francois Truffaut and Jean-Luc Godard.
Mike Hammer while driving his car on the highway is forcefully stopped by a hitchhiking woman named Christina Bailey (played by Cloris Leachman). She is seen running away from some people and has escaped from a psychiatric hospital. Christina and Mike get acquainted with each other and she tells him to “remember me” reciting a poem. Then they get blocked by a bunch of thugs where we later see them torturing and killing Christina while Mike is unconscious. Then the thugs push Mike’s car off a cliff. Mike becomes safe and received at the hospital the next day with his assistant and lover Velda (played by Maxine cooper).
The film then moves on to an intriguing mystery with a mix of the genres. What makes it so delectable is the performances. Especially by Ralph Meeker. He portrays the perfect cool, suave and handsome detective that gets tough when needed. He alone is complex and the compilation of expressions from his brimming smile to his body language makes us interested in the story and glued to the screen for the mystery unfolding. The complexity comes from the way the private detective usually handles cases. He handles mostly infidelity cases but in those cases too he creates unsavory situations to get the truth. He is notorious and can be misogynistic which at the time of the release had some heads grinning but the notion of the hard boil detective was in actuality perfected in this character.
The dialogue also creates a transit state of engagement throughout. It is perfectly in sync with the noir genre and combined with some excellent staging of scenes it is fascinating to watch. Some quirky dialogues are sprinkled throughout the film like
“Do me a favor, will you? Keep away from the windows. Somebody might... blow you a kiss.”
and the wonderful conversational moment between Mike and Velda
“Christina Georgina Rossetti. Poetess, English, born 1830, died 1894. Your Christina was being held in that hospital for interrogation... What's the point of all this, if it's any of my business? ”
“She told me if I dropped her off at the bus station, I could forget her. But if she didn't make it, she said, "Remember me.”
"So, remember her. She's dead. But I'm not dead. Hey, remember me?“
“Yeah. I remember you from somewhere.”
This film and story could be attributed to the times of the 1950s and during the cold war where the thought of nuclear weapons was more prevalent and talked about. Directed by Robert Aldrich who later on made even more great noir and drama films like What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?(1962) and The dirty Dozen (1967) and many more. The film turned out to be a great inspiration for the American noir. It also got labelled as a nihilistic film because of the subject choice and how the atomic bomb was a paranoia for many. Critics viewed it as metaphor of nuclear war during the 1950s and how Velda’s quote of “the great whatsit” could be attributed in the same context.
Kiss Me Deadly is an excellent noir film that explores other genres with the right mix of elements. It is world of bleakness and a film that is unique and weird (in a good way) for its own genre bubble. With fantastic performances, great writing and a relevant plot that could punch out in todays society, a film that has all the essence of great mystery.