Kiss Me Deadly: The Thriller of Tomorrow
By June 20, 2011
Genres collide in the great Hollywood movies of the midfifties cold-war thaw. With the truce in Korea and the red scare on the wane, ambitious directors seemed freer to mix Read more »
- United States
- 1955
- 106 minutes
- Black and White
- 1.66:1
- English
- Spine #568
SYNOPSIS: In this atomic adaptation of Mickey Spillane’s novel, directed by Robert Aldrich, the good manners of the 1950s are blown to smithereens. Ralph Meeker stars as snarling private dick Mike Hammer, whose decision one dark, lonely night to pick up a hitchhiking woman sends him down some terrifying byways. Brazen and bleak, Kiss Me Deadly is a film noir masterwork as well as an essential piece of cold war paranoia, and it features as nervy an ending as has ever been seen in American cinema.
Cast & CreditsOpen
Cast
| Mike Hammer | Ralph Meeker |
| Dr. Soberin | Albert Dekker |
| Carl Evello | Paul Stewart |
| Eddie Yeager | Juano Hernandez |
| Nick | Nick Dennis |
| Pat Murphy | Wesley Addy |
| Friday | Marion Carr |
| Velda | Maxine Cooper |
| Christina | Cloris Leachman |
| Carver | Gaby Rodgers |
Credits
| Director | Robert Aldrich |
| Producer | Robert Aldrich |
| Executive producer | Victor Saville |
| Screenplay | A. I. Bezzerides |
| Music composed and conducted by | Frank DeVol |
| Orchestrations by | Albert Harris |
| Makeup | Bob Schiffer |
| Casting supervisor | Jack Murton |
| Sound | Jack Solomon |
| Assistant to the producer | Robert Sherman |
| Assistant director | Robert Justman |
| Editing | Michael Luciano |
| Set decorator | Howard Bristol |
| Art director | William Glasgow |
| Production supervisor | Jack R. Berne |
| Photographed by | Ernest Laszlo |
| “Rather Have the Blues” sung by | Nat “King” Cole |
Disc Features
- New high-definition restoration (with uncompressed monaural soundtrack on the Blu-ray edition)
- Audio commentary by film noir specialists Alain Silver and James Ursini
- New video tribute from director Alex Cox
- Excerpts from The Long Haul of A. I. Bezzerides, a 2005 documentary on the Kiss Me Deadly screenwriter
- Mike Hammer’s Mickey Spillane, a 1998 documentary about the life and work of the author
- Video pieces on the film’s locations
- Controversial altered ending
- Theatrical trailer
- PLUS: A booklet featuring an essay by critic J. Hoberman and a 1955 reprint by director Robert Aldrich
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The Great Whozits
By June 27, 2011
A rogue’s gallery of vituperative 1950s vixens and night-world tough-guy gargoyles all coalescing in a constellation of twinkling cold war lights, Robert Aldrich’s Kiss Me Deadly is a film of a thousand Read more »
Press Notes
Press Notes: Best of 2011
January 13, 2012
It’s the time of year when the list makers do their heavy lifting, looking back over the preceding twelve months and deciding what was best and brightest. We’re happy to report that some of our Read more »
Press Notes: Kiss Me Deadly
July 07, 2011
“If film noir were to be forgotten, Robert Aldrich’s frenzied 1955 masterwork, Kiss Me Deadly, might serve as the supreme reminder of what the genre had been,” writes Richard Brody in a New Yorker Read more »
