The opening of Kiss Me Deadly was something that I saw years before I saw the full film of Aldrich's Kiss Me Deadly, courtesy of Scorsese's American Movies doc. Just from this I could tell this movie had something "else" to this. In an incredible but shocking and, in its way, logical process, it shows a series of shots of a woman running down a road, stopping thanks to a car (driven by our PI, Mike Hammer), and then after a few moments of being safe with this man and the mystery not revealed yet... the car is stopped, feet come forward - and a dissolve over a woman's scream to a woman's legs being tortured. Then the perspective of Hammer, off to the side totally out of it, hearing men's voices discussing vague things involving what to do.
As any Screen writing 101 teacher will tell you, getting the opening and the ending of a movie right is so crucial. Here, this movie has both, and the ending involves that briefcase (yeah, that one, thanks Quentin for the reference). But what Aldrich and his collaborators do here is interesting: if you hear on the interview on the Criterion DVD, the movie isn't a close adaptation of the book - in fact it deviates a bit. The book doesn't have the whole aspect of the nuclear secrets. It was just another story of Hammer getting into violent s*** and kicking ass and taking names in the midst of his story.
Luckily, Aldrich also has a fine lead in Ralph Meeker, who can play tough and take-no-s*** just fine (he never 'made it' as a leading man, but he shows up in a number of memorable movies over the years from Alrdich, Kubrick and Lang). In this story Hammer is out to find out what the hell happened to him that night, who that dame was (played by a young Cloris Leachman by the way), and why he was set up to die in a car crash. He gets help from a mechanic and his secretary, but of course Hammer also has to contend with the FBI. Why are they involved? Oh, you'll find out.
The quality of the writing, however much it eschews Spillane's text or not, helps Aldrich to get to what he needs with this story. But it's such a rich film visually, too. He chooses his shots carefully, he doesn't cut to quickly when a key piece of info comes up (i.e. the first time any nuclear talk comes up between Hammer and an FBI guy), and how he follows people and then proceeds to beat them up. Or just talks to the woman by his side in the story (the one who... well, don't want to spoil it just yet).
It's the kind of no-nonsense noir I wish I had seen on a big screen first. It's made for that, and I imagine if a film society or retro-house put it on a double bill with something like The Big Heat, also featuring Meeker in a much different role, it'd grow some hair on a man's chest! Seriously, this is strong stuff of the period, which also somehow manages to push the envelope of what you could show at the time by what it doesn't show (how is Christina tortured for example - we don't know, and that makes it worse). It's a director taking B-movie pulp and elevating it with art and craft and a vision. And grit. And blood.
As any Screen writing 101 teacher will tell you, getting the opening and the ending of a movie right is so crucial. Here, this movie has both, and the ending involves that briefcase (yeah, that one, thanks Quentin for the reference). But what Aldrich and his collaborators do here is interesting: if you hear on the interview on the Criterion DVD, the movie isn't a close adaptation of the book - in fact it deviates a bit. The book doesn't have the whole aspect of the nuclear secrets. It was just another story of Hammer getting into violent s*** and kicking ass and taking names in the midst of his story.
Luckily, Aldrich also has a fine lead in Ralph Meeker, who can play tough and take-no-s*** just fine (he never 'made it' as a leading man, but he shows up in a number of memorable movies over the years from Alrdich, Kubrick and Lang). In this story Hammer is out to find out what the hell happened to him that night, who that dame was (played by a young Cloris Leachman by the way), and why he was set up to die in a car crash. He gets help from a mechanic and his secretary, but of course Hammer also has to contend with the FBI. Why are they involved? Oh, you'll find out.
The quality of the writing, however much it eschews Spillane's text or not, helps Aldrich to get to what he needs with this story. But it's such a rich film visually, too. He chooses his shots carefully, he doesn't cut to quickly when a key piece of info comes up (i.e. the first time any nuclear talk comes up between Hammer and an FBI guy), and how he follows people and then proceeds to beat them up. Or just talks to the woman by his side in the story (the one who... well, don't want to spoil it just yet).
It's the kind of no-nonsense noir I wish I had seen on a big screen first. It's made for that, and I imagine if a film society or retro-house put it on a double bill with something like The Big Heat, also featuring Meeker in a much different role, it'd grow some hair on a man's chest! Seriously, this is strong stuff of the period, which also somehow manages to push the envelope of what you could show at the time by what it doesn't show (how is Christina tortured for example - we don't know, and that makes it worse). It's a director taking B-movie pulp and elevating it with art and craft and a vision. And grit. And blood.