Before comics dominated the word, there were pulp novels. Before Batman and other costumed men of mystery became the go-to people for crime-solving you had, well, plain old detectives. Private investigators, men who explored places the law wouldn’t touch, dodging bullets and femme fatales in their dogged pursuit of the truth. They weren’t master sleuths by any means, but they could put the pieces together and they could hold their liquor as well as they could take a punch, and that was the coolest shit in the world for a number of years. Like comic book movies except they could win Oscars, basically. The Oscars that aren’t about special effects, I mean, which is the only thing those crusty assholes at the Academy can bring themselves to give movies that dare to think of themselves as science fiction.
Much like any field of entertainment like this, there are a couple names and a couple characters that manage to stand out amongst the rest. Raymond Chandler and his creation Philip Marlowe, who has been portrayed on the silver screen by the likes of Humphrey Bogart, Elliott Gould and Robert Mitchum. Rex Stout and his character Nero Wolfe, who has been adapted to film, radio and television multiple times. And, as is most relevant to this article, Mickey Spillane and his character Mike Hammer. Mr. Hammer had his own success in movies and television, beginning with 1953’s I, The Jury all the way through to the 00’s, but the one that we’ll be looking at this time around is the second of the Mike Hammer films, 1955’s Kiss Me Deadly.
There are a million stories in the naked city, and on a dark Los Angeles night private investigator Mike Hammer is pulled into one when a mysterious woman flags him down on a deserted road. She never gives her name, but she does reveal that she’s escaped from an asylum and that she’s looking to be dropped off at the nearest bus station in order to disappear. After they stop off at a nearby gas station, she hands the attendant a mysterious letter and tells Mike that if anything should happen to her to “Remember Me”. Which would probably set off more than a few red flags in my head, but I guess Mike Hammer is a much cooler guy than I am.
Sure enough, as soon as she mentions that something might happen, a car ends up driving Hammer’s car off the road, and the two are kidnapped. The woman is tortured to death, and Hammer almost dies when they push him and his car down a hill. A situation that most would rather forget, but Mike, not a huge fan of almost being murdered over something he knows nothing about, decides to look into it. Things can’t just be that easy though, and Mike soon finds himself entangled in a web of conspiracy that just might go all the way up to the F.B.I. Who was this mysterious woman, and what kind of mysterious knowledge did she have that was worth killing over? Mike Hammer is on the case.
As far as being a mystery story goes, KMD ends up stumbling at the starting bell. I dunno what it is, maybe my attention was elsewhere at the time, but it seems like it takes until the end of the movie before you ever really figure out what it is Mike is supposed to be doing or what he’s looking for, and the thread of the story just becomes totally disjointed. I mean, it’s about a half hour in before we even find out the name of the murdered woman, and by that point in time we find out there’s actually another murder that’s actually the one we should be paying attention to about a character we never meet, and it ends up congealing into a one big clusterfuck of a plot. Oh, and don’t expect the ending to clear anything up either. It’s one of those ‘and now the movie ends’-type jams.
What Kiss Me Deadly, and Mickey Spillane in general, does well however, is provide all the sex and violence you could want in a hardboiled detective story. What Mike Hammer lacks in depth and complex emotional he makes up for in pure grit: making out with the ladies (who all fling themselves to his feet), punching out the goons (who are A-grade dumb, brutish bastards), slapping around the wimpy types (who are A-grade weak, nebbish milquetoasts) and getting stone-faced drunk at least once. A male power fantasy in its basest form, and while that could be and has been considered a point of criticism with Spillane’s work, I don’t think it’s necessarily a bad thing or that it negatively impacts the film itself. Literature is as much a source of entertainment as it is of art, perhaps more so in some people’s opinion, and occasionally people just want something simple and dirty to pass the time. It’s the same way that people can be into anything Frank Miller has written since Year One, despite it being one-note garbage. It’s something to be consumed rather than analyzed, and in that way Kiss Me Deadly is more a movie that invokes feelings, anger, satisfaction, lust, rather than provoke thoughts. Way better than anything Frank Miller ever wrote too.
So when it comes to the actual acting itself I’m not exactly sure what to say, as they all pretty much have one pigment to paint with in a manner of speaking, and they paint it just fine. Ralph Meeker’s portrayal of Mike Hammer is rather good, every line he speaks has this intensity about it, a sort of definite air about it. No matter whether he’s the one in control or not, whether he actually knows anything or not (and he generally doesn’t), he always manages to project this feeling of being the one who really knows the score. He may not be a guy who considers the consequences of his actions, but you can’t doubt the strength of his convictions.
Also worth noting that is Cloris Leachman’s first credited role, as the mysterious murdered woman Christina. I’ll admit that I didn’t even realize that she was the one that played Christina, which isn’t meant as a slight against Ms. Leachman, just that there isn’t much to take away from the character besides ‘crazy woman who ends up dead’.
With the story the way it is, I suppose I can’t say Kiss Me Deadly is ‘uncomplicated’, but if you want something hardboiled and you’ve run out of eggs, then this might be right up your alley. Hell, if you’re looking for something to watch on Halloween (aren’t we all?) this movie actually has a higher body count than Hardware and The Raven combined, and we all know how the amount of deaths in a movie is indicative of its quality. So grab yourself a bottle of scotch and settle in for a night of Hammer. It’s bound to be a fun one.
No comments:
Post a Comment