In association with

Kiss Me Deadly [1955]
from MGM Entertainment
starring Ralph Meeker, Albert Dekker, Paul Stewart, Juano Hernandez, Wesley Addy
directed by Robert Aldrich

Features:

• Black & White
• PAL

Editorial Review:

A terrific film noir full of skewed camera angles and mysterious whose-shoes-are-those shots, Kiss Me Deadly is about as dark and exciting as noir gets. A young woman (Cloris Leachman) in bare feet and a trench coat throws herself into the traffic to flag down help and the car she stops belongs to detective Mike Hammer. Not even 15 minutes into the film and there's already been a murder, a mysterious letter, an attempt to kill Hammer and, of course, a warning to stay out of it. Hammer, tired of lowlife divorce cases, smells something big and can't let it go.

Mike Hammer is a detective so cool he can win a fight with nothing more than a box of popcorn as a weapon; he knows his opera singers as well as his amateur prize-fighters and he makes the ladies swoon--but he's far from a conventional hero. In fact, he's emphatically not a nice guy; Hammer happily whores out his secretary-girlfriend Velma to cinch up those divorce cases and has a penchant for slamming other people's fingers in drawers. Even the bad guys know he's a sleazebag ("What's it worth to you to turn your considerable talents back to the gutter you crawled out of?"). Ralph Meeker plays Hammer's ambivalence brilliantly, swinging easily between sexy and just plain mean. --Ali Davis

Customer Reviews:

• Avg. Customer Rating: 4.5 / 5.0

• A fine low-budget thriller with great noir visual style. If only professional critics would stop talking about nuclear metaphors
  When Nat Cole's smooth, melancholy delivery sends "Rather Have the Blues Than What I've Got" out of Mike Hammer's car radio late one night, we know nothing good is going to happen. Hammer has just picked up a desperate young woman named Christina who had been running down an isolated California two-lane rode.
  "The room is dark and gloomy, you don't know what you're doing to me
  The way it has got me caught, I'd rather have the blues than what I've got."
  The lyrics might not be good, but... more info

• A lot more to this than meets the eye...
  Over thirty years ago, long, long before Sky had tied up new releases and the quality back catalogue, a film fan could educate him or herself through the simple expedient of watching terrestrial tv. Most nights from about 11 pm BBC2 was showing classics of British, world or US cinema. That's how I first stumbled on "Kiss Me Deadly" - a bored teenager flicking through the very limited range of channels available. That turned out to be one of the most memorable film experiences of my life. Its been called the... more info

• Top spot-low budget.
  Micky Spillane was not Doestoyevski, so you'd expect films of his detective fiction to be far from Oscar-winning works.
  In this case,Ralph Meeker is perfect. As Mike Hammer, he is convincingly, by turns, slow on the uptake, brutal, brutalised, and unable to resist the notion the femme fatale, stunningly portrayed by Gaby Rogers, could just be innocent.
  There's enough style and styialisation to stay with you and your remeberances of this film forever. Thankfully,it doesn't pad the film out, and... more info

• Brutal and the best Film Noir of them all
  This film will stun you with how many immatations it has spawned. The stylised speech the scenes where the violence is just merely suggested now shown to you with popcorn dropping photography. i feel that to truly grasp the impact of this film you have to understand the times, the culture and the politics of the era then you will see why this film is considered the best film noir. I would recommend that you buy it or rent it , if you love the film noir genre and do not have this film you are missing a treat

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