| Product: |
Kiss Me Deadly (DVD) |
| Date: |
21/11/07 (126 review reads) |
| Rating: |
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Advantages: It's a very good film
Disadvantages: Perhaps a bit old-fashioned
(This is a review of the MGM DVD release.)
This is a real classic from 1955. One of the last of the film noirs (or is it films noires? Who knows...), it was adapted from a pulp crime novel by Mickey Spillane. It's surprisingly adult for a film made more than 50 years ago, when censorship had effectively forced Hollywood to make all movies safe for a five-year-old to watch. The 1950s seem to be the decade in which Hollywood started to grow up, and Kiss Me Deadly reflects that.
Mike Hammer, a private detective, picks up a young woman hitch-hiker one night. She's on the run and seriously frightened. Captured that same night, she's tortured to death by bad men looking for... something. A faked car crash is supposed to take Hammer out of the picture, but he survives. Determined to find out what's going on, he's plunged into an increasingly shady and brutal sequence of events.
This is a damn good film. As with so much film noir it manages to be genuinely surprising, although that's at least in part down to the fact that I don't expect 1950s Hollywood movies to depict the kinds of things we see here. Hammer's not a noble seeker after the truth, he's a divorce detective. He makes his cash by seducing women and dishing the dirt on them to their husbands - while Hammer's girlfriend Velma seduces the husbands. This kind of sleazy amorality is not what you expect in a film of the era, and Hammer's basically an unlikeable person. He's quite clear that he's only interested in this case because he expects to earn big off it; his interest in the murdered girl is purely mercenary (although he does show signs of conscience when he gets his friends in too deep). He also takes visible pleasure in torturing witnesses (smashing one man's valuable record collection, roughing up a coroner, slapping a porter around). He's played by Ralph Meeker, like most of the cast, not a name I've seen elsewhere, but he's great, like a musclebound Charlton Heston without the nobility.
The rest of the characters, all well played by people I generally hadn't heard of, are a nicely pungent mixture of hustlers, chicks on the make, small-time hoods, big-time villains and oddballs. Hammer's girlfriend doesn't seem in the least bit bothered that she's basically a prostitute. (Most of the women in the film seem resigned to the idea that they have to sleep around to get anywhere in life.) Hammer's only real friend is an incredibly frenetic Mexican mechanic (catchphrase: 'Va-va-voom!'). From my reading of James Ellroy, I suspect he might be 'hopped up' on 'goofballs'. Best of all is the main villain, a man so brainy that his most urgent warnings go right over the head of the person they're aimed at, with disastrous consequences.
It's what everyone's searching for that really makes this film special, though. It's definitely not your usual detective story MacGuffin and we get subtle hints as to what it might be that only become obvious when one of the characters spells it out ("Manhattan Project... Los Alamos... Trinity..."). Without wanting to give *too* much away, it's inspired films as diverse as Seven, Raiders of the Lost Ark and Pulp Fiction. The ending of the film is truly astounding, and is what it's best known for.
It's all very reminiscent of the work of James Ellroy - the film Kiss Me Deadly reminds me of the most is LA Confidential (except that Kiss Me's more satisfying. LA Confidential has a gratifyingly complicated plot but can't really recreate the ending of the novel, so opts to finish with a big gun fight; Kiss Me Deadly has a gratifyingly complicated plot and an intelligent ending). It's set in the LA that Ellroy later made his own, a world that contrasts down-at-heel boarding houses and palatial mansions and the people that live in them. While obviously it can't match modern films in terms of savagery or sexual frankness, there's a nastiness to some of the violence that still works. The torture of the girl at the beginning is really quite horrific when you realise what's being done to her. And as mentioned already, it's sexually more frank than you might expect.
It's directed in no-nonsense style by Robert Aldrich, who later did The Dirty Dozen (among other things). The opening credits are quite startling (the credits scrolling the wrong way to a soundtrack of a woman sobbing with Nat King Cole crooning in the background); otherwise the direction isn't particularly showy, getting on with telling the story rather than impressing us with clever camera angles and tricks. The black and white photography is equally undistracting. While I appreciate a good bit of filmic artistry as much as the next chap some films definitely benefit from *not* trying to show off, and what worked in Citizen Kane wouldn't have worked here. The film builds up some nice tense moments, too; as a thriller it stands up surprisingly well.
There aren't many bad points to this. The music is old-fashioned (although it makes use of classical music in a way that seems more modern). There are some dreadfully unsubtle 'dun dun dunnnhhhh' musical stings, often underlining quite banal revelations. The plot is perhaps a bit *too* complex; I'm still not quite sure how Hammer tracked down certain characters. And I guess some may have problems with the rather old-fashioned elements, such as its attitude to women ('The incomplete sex'), though it's difficult to tell how seriously we're meant to take that. And we do get some corking dialogue: 'Kiss me! The liar's kiss that says I love you but means something else!'
The only extra is a trailer which is nothing special. The picture quality is fine. It's a 12 certificate, which seems about right. This is available for less than £4 on amazon. Give it a try.
Summary: Classic film noir available on the cheap
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