Kiss Me Deadly

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This article is about the 1955 film. For the Generation X album see Kiss Me Deadly (album). For the Lita Ford song, see the article on her album Lita (album).

Kiss Me Deadly
Kiss Me Deadly film poster
Directed by	Robert Aldrich
Produced by	Robert Aldrich
Written by	Mickey Spillane (novel) A. I. Bezzerides
Starring	Ralph Meeker Albert Dekker Paul Stewart Cloris Leachman Maxine Cooper Nick Dennis Marion Carr Jack Lambert Jack Elam Gaby Rodgers
Cinematography	Ernest Laszlo
Distributed by	United Artists
Release date(s)	May 18, 1955
Running time	106 min. (US, original version: 104 min.)
Country	US
Language	English
Budget	$410,000 (est.)
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IMDb profile

Kiss Me Deadly is a 1955 film produced and directed by Robert Aldrich starring Ralph Meeker. The screenplay was written by A. I. Bezzerides based on a Mickey Spillane Mike Hammer mystery story.

Kiss Me Deadly is considered a classic of the film noir genre. References (usually to the glowing briefcase) appear in such diverse films as Steven Spielberg's Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981), Alex Cox's Repo Man (1984), Quentin Tarantino's Pulp Fiction (1994) and David Lynch's Lost Highway (1997).

The film grossed $726,000 in the States and a total of $226,000 overseas.

[edit] Plot

Spoiler warning: Plot and/or ending details follow.

Meeker plays Mike Hammer, a tough Los Angeles private eye who is just slightly less brutal and corrupt than the crooks he chases.

One evening, Hammer gives a ride to Christina (Cloris Leachman), an attractive hitchhiker he picks up on a lonely country road. Thugs waylay them and force his car to crash. When Hammer returns to semiconsciousness, he hears Christina being tortured until she dies. Hammer, both for vengeance and in hopes that "something big" is behind it all, decides to pursue the case. It develops that "the great whatsit" [as Hammer's assistant Velda (Maxine Cooper) calls it] at the center of Hammer's quest is a small, mysterious valise containing a dangerous glowing substance.

According to film historian Robert Osborne, the American release of the film shows Hammer and Velda escaping from the burning house at the end, running into the ocean as the words "The End" come over them on the screen, while the European version removes the scene where Hammer and Velda escape, the words "The End" showing over the burning house, implying (though not actually showing) the death of the two heroes.

Hammer is surely one of the darkest of anti-hero private detectives in the film noir genre. He apparently makes most of his living by blackmailing adulterous husbands and wives, and he takes an obvious sadistic pleasure in violence, whether he's beating up thugs sent to kill him or roughing up a coroner who's slow to part with a piece of information.

In 1999, Kiss Me Deadly was deemed "culturally significant" by the United States Library of Congress and selected for preservation in the National Film Registry.