Saturday, May 11, 2013

Kiss Me Deadly

Kiss Me Deadly is a 1955 film noir based on the Mickey Spillane novel by the same name. Directed by Robert Aldrich, it stars Ralph Meeker (as Mike Hammer), Maxine Cooper (as Velda), Albert Dekker, Paul Stewart, Cloris Leachman (in her feature film debut), Jack Elam and Strother Martin. Leonard Mudie, who was in the original Star Trek pilot The Cage, has an uncredited role. Dated, but still enjoyable, it's a tense thriller that has held up despite its Cold War setting.



Slant Magazine gives it 4 out of 5 stars and calls it "a savage film noir masterpiece". DVD Talk calls it "a cultural hand grenade, circa 1955". Empire Online gives it 5 out of 5 stars and concludes with this "verdict": "Noir taken to its most nihilistic extreme, with an atomic menace that guarantees a memorably explosive climax." TimeOut says, "it now stands as a crucial influence on what would become the French new wave, an irresistibly seedy trip through the Los Angeles underworld, and a valuable artifact of Cold War anxiety." FilmSite.org calls it "the definitive, apocalyptic, nihilistic, science-fiction film noir of all time". EW gives it a B+ and describes it as "strangely seductive". Rotten Tomatoes has a critics score of 97%.

No comments:

Post a Comment