The Movie
This early film from Hollywood mainstay Robert Aldrich (What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?, Hush...Hush, Sweet Charlotte, The Dirty Dozen) must have caused quite a stir for its raw style and edgy subject matter back in 1955. In Kiss Me Deadly, Mickey Spillane's notorious "hero" of page and screen Mike Hammer (Ralph Meeker) is a sleazy private eye specializing in divorce cases. Much like early James Bond, he seems to think women are only good for one thing, until he picks up a mysterious hitchhiker (a very young Cloris Leachman, in a trenchcoat and nothing else) in the middle of the night. Something about her really gets under his thick skin, and when he and she are nabbed, manhandled (SPOILER ALERT!)--to death in her case--and driven off of a cliff, he's determined to blow this dirty business wide open.
His life quickly goes from bad to worse, as his P.I. and gun license are suspended, leaving him only his mitts and his attitude to take on a seemingly endless team of real nasties who want him to stop investigating, maybe even stop breathing. He's mixed up in something big all right, with the dead bodies piling up on the way to finding "The Great Whatsit," a mysterious case that glows from within, playing into Cold War paranoia while inspiring everything from Raiders of the Lost Ark to Pulp Fiction.
The Picture
Kiss Me Deadly is a great L.A. movie, shot on location and '50s Los Angeles just looks so right in black-and-white. The Criterion Blu-ray brings a new 5:3 HD transfer from a 35mm fine-grain master positive print, digitally cleaned and delivering deep, delicious blacks. The photography itself is often bold but simple, unafraid to fill the frame with barely anything, perhaps only a couple of faces drifting through the night.
The pillarboxed image (thin vertical black bars left and right) is slightly soft as we would expect, with mild grain but some excellent detail. The slight focus peculiarities are maintained and backgrounds are mostly clean. Minor edge enhancement is in evidence.
The Sound
The original mono soundtrack has been mastered at 24-bit from a 35mm optical track, also digitally spiffed up to remove pops and hiss and crackle and such, presented here as Linear PCM 1.0. It does the job, the dialogue is more than adequately reproduced, but when anything sonically interesting is happening, the limits of this track become painfully obvious. In one scene, an opera record plays in the distance, we move closer, we can now hear a man singing along with it: it's just a bunch of sounds with no depth or character. And the explosive finale, like a thousand screams unleashed at once... is really kinda annoying. But as is Criterion's strong suit, I'm confident that at least it's faithful to what Aldrich wanted audiences to hear, given the limits of technology at his disposal.
The Extras
This beloved film noir now packs a brand-new commentary by specialists on the genre Alain Silver and James Ursini, a track indexed by 15 different topics. Director Alex Cox (did I forget to mention Kiss Me Deadly's influence on Cox's Repo Man, from the backwards credits to the hot, glowing MacGuffin?) dissects the movie with a unique charm (six-and-a-half minutes). We're given a newly truncated 40-minute version Max Allan Collins' 1998 documentary Mike Hammer's Mickey Spillane, created with Mr. Spillane's support and here with a text postscript by Collins.
The nine-minute profile of the screenwriter (A.I. Bezzerides) borrows much from the 2007 feature The Long Haul of A.I. Bezzerides. In "Bunker Hill, Los Angeles," writer/film buff Jim Dawson and writer/actor Don Bajema combine clips, gorgeous vintage photos and narration about the formerly swanky, now run-down section of the city (seven minutes), followed by about two minutes of modern, color video of key L.A. spots.
Lastly, we take a look at the long-trimmed final scene, which suffered from more than a minute missing--resulting in quite different mood and meaning--until its 1997 restoration (a mere 22 seconds). All of these extras are in HD, although some is at 1080i quality.
Final Thoughts
An essential noir, Kiss Me Deadly looks deadly good in its Blu-ray debut, sounds about as good as it could, and is kissed with some sexy new bonus features. Highly recommended.
Product Details
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