June 17, 2010Kiss Me Deadly (1955) ***1/2Directed by Robert AldrichMy tweet:Kiss Me Deadly (1955)- Slick, dark, entertaining noir with one of the trashiest and most audacious endings in all film. ***1/2 out of 5Other thoughts:Kiss Me Deadly works as a campy film noir. Its chilling opening sequence involving future Oscar winner Cloris Leachman in her film debut sets the stage for what will ultimately play out as a hackneyed procedural where private eye Mike Hammer (Ralph Meeker) tries to solve a crime which resulted in Leachman's character's murder. Mike himself was also supposed to die in the car crash, but he survived, and he'll keep on surviving everything from knife wielders to opera singers to truth ser! um pushers to gun toting dames to the contents of a box... a box which contains in it something so evil that the devil himself can't stomach it. I'm paraphrasing a character in Kiss Me Deadly who warns another character not to open said box. When she does, OMG!!! The final scene mirrors the chaos in Ghostbusters when the ghosts are let loose into the city, which on the page might come off curious considering that it's just a couple of people in a beach house dealing with the contents of an open box.The ending is one of the craziest, most unfathomable, and I think hilarious I've ever seen. There Will Be Blood's bowling alley scene doesn't even hold a candle to what happens right before the credits roll. For the first hour and a half, the plot comes across as an exercise in masculinity disguised as a seedy crime thriller. Nothing that precedes prepares the viewer for the forehead-smacking audacity of the havoc of what's in the box. I'd find it hard to believe that audiences c! ould ever have taken this film seriously. That being said, it'! s a whol e lot of fun, and I have to give props to the fact that it's not afraid to ride the story completely off the rails.If I had to judge the film on face value, I'd say that the pacing of the mystery moves at dramatically differing speeds. As pieces are revealed, it's not easy to place them within the puzzle. Eventually, you almost have to give up trying to follow the semantics and just go along for the ride. Ralph Meeker has no screen presence whatsoever, underplaying Mike Hammer to the point that I'd have to think twice before giving him a paycheck for this performance. The direction and soundtrack are pretentious and suffocating, though there are a handful of stylistically impressive moments. Some of the supporting turns, especially by the women who Mike Hammer fatally underestimate, add some depth and life to a plot that runs the risk of disengaging its audience entirely.However, all of these criticisms take a back seat to that ending, and again I'll say it--it's one for the! history books. It's completely satisfying when you allow yourself to experience it on that visceral gut level. Just don't try and rationalize it at all. Kiss Me Deadly provides one of the most wonderfully pulpy film going experiences I've ever had, and for this, I'm in awe.
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