294. Kiss Me Deadly (1955)
Directed By Robert Aldrich
Synopsis
Mike Hammer picks up a woman wearing only a trenchcoat. He gets beat up and she gets tortured to death. After a series of investigations involving a series of grotesque characters Mike understands that the McGuffin is a suitcase containing the great whatsit. The film is the first to teach us not to open suitcases with mysterious shining contents.
Review
So there is a suitcase containing a nuclear device, or Medusa's head or it is Pandora's box and it contains all the evils in the world, frankly it doesn't matter, it is just another element in one of the strangest films to ever grace this list.
The film is clearly noir, or should I say post-noir, the tropes of noir are so skewed that it is unlike any other noir film. It feels like a bad acid trip, a nightmare on celluloid, enhanced by strange camera angles, grotesque characters and a constant mystery surrounding the whole thing.
In the end this feels like the template for Lynch and Cronenberg, but it is weirdly filmed in 1955, and that is what makes this film so amazing. It comes completely out of the blue and therefore only hits you with that much more strength. It is one of those films that you just have to watch. Fascinating throughout, and it makes you think if some of the actors like the room-mate are acting badly because they are bad actors or by some strange design which just makes the whole film more unnerving. Unmissable.
Final Grade
10/10
Trivia
From Wikipedia:
The original 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. Sometime after its first release, the ending was crudely altered on the film's original negative, removing over a minute's worth of shots where Hammer and Velda escape and superimposing the words "The End" over the burning house. This implied that Hammer and Velda perished in the atomic blaze, and was often interpreted to represent the End of the World. In 1997, the original conclusion was restored. The DVD release has the correct original ending, and offers the now-discredited (but influential) truncated ending as an extra.
First 10 minutes:
Synopsis
Mike Hammer picks up a woman wearing only a trenchcoat. He gets beat up and she gets tortured to death. After a series of investigations involving a series of grotesque characters Mike understands that the McGuffin is a suitcase containing the great whatsit. The film is the first to teach us not to open suitcases with mysterious shining contents.
Review
So there is a suitcase containing a nuclear device, or Medusa's head or it is Pandora's box and it contains all the evils in the world, frankly it doesn't matter, it is just another element in one of the strangest films to ever grace this list.
The film is clearly noir, or should I say post-noir, the tropes of noir are so skewed that it is unlike any other noir film. It feels like a bad acid trip, a nightmare on celluloid, enhanced by strange camera angles, grotesque characters and a constant mystery surrounding the whole thing.
In the end this feels like the template for Lynch and Cronenberg, but it is weirdly filmed in 1955, and that is what makes this film so amazing. It comes completely out of the blue and therefore only hits you with that much more strength. It is one of those films that you just have to watch. Fascinating throughout, and it makes you think if some of the actors like the room-mate are acting badly because they are bad actors or by some strange design which just makes the whole film more unnerving. Unmissable.
Final Grade
10/10
Trivia
From Wikipedia:
The original 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. Sometime after its first release, the ending was crudely altered on the film's original negative, removing over a minute's worth of shots where Hammer and Velda escape and superimposing the words "The End" over the burning house. This implied that Hammer and Velda perished in the atomic blaze, and was often interpreted to represent the End of the World. In 1997, the original conclusion was restored. The DVD release has the correct original ending, and offers the now-discredited (but influential) truncated ending as an extra.
First 10 minutes:
posted by Francisco Silva @ 1:48 AM
1 Comments:
At 7:07 PM,
Anonymous said…
Well written article.
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