Kiss Me Deadly
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
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| The film grossed $726,000 in the States and a total of $226,000 overseas. | The film grossed $726,000 in the States and a total of $226,000 overseas. | ||
| ==Critical reviews== | ==Critical reviews== | ||
| - | Critical commentary generally views it as a [[metaphor]] for the [[paranoia]] and nuclear fears of the [[Cold War]] era in which it was filmed.<ref>Prince, Stephen, ''Visions of Empire: Political Imagery in Contemporary American Film'', Praeger/Greenwood, 1992, ISBN 0275936627.</ref> | + | Critical commentary generally views it as a [[metaphor]] for the [[paranoia]] and nuclear fears of the [[Cold War]] era in which it was filmed. |
| - | Although a [[Left-wing politics|leftist]] at the time of the [[Hollywood blacklist]], Bezzerides denied any conscious intention for this meaning in his script. About the topic, he said, "I was having fun with it. I wanted to make every scene, every character, interesting."<ref>[http://news.independent.co.uk/people/obituaries/article2169227.ece Vallance, Tom]. ''The Independent'', Obituary, "A. I. Bezzerides. No-nonsense novelist/screenwriter," [[January 20]] [[2007]]. Last accessed: March 25, 2008.</ref> | + | Although a [[Left-wing politics|leftist]] at the time of the [[Hollywood blacklist]], Bezzerides denied any conscious intention for this meaning in his script. About the topic, he said, "I was having fun with it. I wanted to make every scene, every character, interesting." |
| Film critic Nick Schager wrote, "Never was Mike Hammer's name more fitting than in ''Kiss Me Deadly,'' Robert Aldrich's blisteringly nihilistic noir in which star Ralph Meeker embodies Mickey Spillane's legendary P.I. with brute force savagery...The gumshoe's subsequent investigation into the woman's death doubles as a lacerating indictment of modern society's dissolution into physical/moral/spiritual degeneracy—a reversion that ultimately leads to nuclear apocalypse and man's return to the primordial sea—with the director's knuckle-sandwich cynicism pummeling the genre's romantic fatalism into a bloody pulp. 'Remember me'? Aldrich's sadistic, fatalistic masterpiece is impossible to forget." | Film critic Nick Schager wrote, "Never was Mike Hammer's name more fitting than in ''Kiss Me Deadly,'' Robert Aldrich's blisteringly nihilistic noir in which star Ralph Meeker embodies Mickey Spillane's legendary P.I. with brute force savagery...The gumshoe's subsequent investigation into the woman's death doubles as a lacerating indictment of modern society's dissolution into physical/moral/spiritual degeneracy—a reversion that ultimately leads to nuclear apocalypse and man's return to the primordial sea—with the director's knuckle-sandwich cynicism pummeling the genre's romantic fatalism into a bloody pulp. 'Remember me'? Aldrich's sadistic, fatalistic masterpiece is impossible to forget." | ||
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Kiss Me Deadly (1955) is a film noir drama produced and directed by Robert Aldrich starring Ralph Meeker. The screenplay was written by A.I. Bezzerides, based on the Mickey Spillane Mike Hammer mystery novel Kiss Me, Deadly.
Kiss Me Deadly is considered a classic of the noir genre. References (usually to the glowing briefcase) appear in such diverse films as Steven Spielberg's Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981), Alex Cox's Repo Man (1984), Quentin Tarantino's Pulp Fiction (1994), David Lynch's Lost Highway (1997) and Richard Kelly's Southland Tales (2007).
The film grossed $726,000 in the States and a total of $226,000 overseas.
Critical reviews
Critical commentary generally views it as a metaphor for the paranoia and nuclear fears of the Cold War era in which it was filmed.
Although a leftist at the time of the Hollywood blacklist, Bezzerides denied any conscious intention for this meaning in his script. About the topic, he said, "I was having fun with it. I wanted to make every scene, every character, interesting."
Film critic Nick Schager wrote, "Never was Mike Hammer's name more fitting than in Kiss Me Deadly, Robert Aldrich's blisteringly nihilistic noir in which star Ralph Meeker embodies Mickey Spillane's legendary P.I. with brute force savagery...The gumshoe's subsequent investigation into the woman's death doubles as a lacerating indictment of modern society's dissolution into physical/moral/spiritual degeneracy—a reversion that ultimately leads to nuclear apocalypse and man's return to the primordial sea—with the director's knuckle-sandwich cynicism pummeling the genre's romantic fatalism into a bloody pulp. 'Remember me'? Aldrich's sadistic, fatalistic masterpiece is impossible to forget."
The review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes reported that 100% of critics gave the film a positive review, based on nineteen reviews."
