When Director Robert Aldrich proposed to adapt Mickey Spillane's Mike Hammer novel: Kiss Me, Deadly, in 1955, the Hollywood Production Code Authority (PCA) told him the project was "a complete violation of the code." The book featured ultra-tough private detective Hammer tracking down drug smugglers in revenge for the killing of a friend and an escaped mental patient. The drug trafficking angle was still a big no no for Hollywood, but so was the pervasive, sadistic violence and sex in the novel.*
Aldrich and screen writer A. I. Bezzerides went ahead anyway, dropping the drug plot line and replacing it with a bizarre McGuffin that was either a box full of highly volatile atomic material or an imprisoned demon. They inserted dialog from side characters that criticized Hammer for his disregard for morality and penchant for violence, hoping that would balance out the sadism of the bad guys and even Hammer himself. Aldrich was still threatened by the Legion of Decency with condemnation of the film, made a few small cuts in response, but the finished and released version remains a landmark in the advancement of film violence.
Mickey Spillane was an enormously successful author; his first Mike Hammer book: I, the Jury, sold 6 1/2 million copies in the US. alone. As I can testify, the books are terrible, but the violence and sex was on the outer fringes of the day, and you didn't need a bachelor's degree in English literature to read them.
In preparation for this article, I tried to read the original novel but gave up halfway through. Here's an example of the tortured prose that runs throughout it:
"I sat there for a while, staring at the multicolored reflections of the city that made my window a living, moving kaleidoscope. The voice of the monster outside the glass was a constant drone, but when you listened long enough, it became a flat, sarcastic sneer that pushed ten million people into bigger and better troubles, and then the sneer was heard for what it was, a derisive laugh that thought blood was running from an open wound was funny, and death was the biggest joke of all."
Or this...
"I looked at that mouth that wasn't just damp now, but wet and she said, 'Mike damn you,' softly and I tasted the hunger in her until the fury of it was too much and I let her go."
There are so many wet mouths in Spillane's books.
I'm sure that Aldrich, coming off two very successful films the previous year in Apache and Vera Cruz, was looking to strike gold off of the Mike Hammer franchise. He originally intended to film two of them back to back, but after Kiss Me Deadly proved a box office disappointment, he dropped the next one and made the The Big Knife instead, a dark drama that exposed the moral rot of Hollywood.
Kiss Me Deadly was nearly denied exhibition certification by the PCA. On release, the Kefauver Commission claimed it was "designed to ruin young viewers." Strangely, it was not condemned after all by the Legion of Decency.
What did viewers get with Kiss Me Deadly?
The movie opens on Hammer nearly running over a woman escaped from a mental institution wearing nothing but a trench coat. Further down the road they are ambushed by a group of gangsters, who knock out Hammer and torture the girl to death with a pair of pliers. The camera lingers on her spasming bare legs while her gruesome screams echo in the background. The PCA was less concerned by the torture than by the implication that the girl was nude while it occurred. They cautioned Aldrich, who responded by making sure the trench coat was visible on the floor under her flailing legs.
Hammer turns on a thug who is trailing him, punching him senseless, then smashes his head into a wall repeatedly. As he turns away, the thug gets up and advances on him; Hammer throws him down a steep concrete stairs. Under pressure from the PCA, Aldrich did remove a few kicks and a kneeing in the groin.
Hammer roughs up several hapless civilians who don't respond immediately to his requests for information. The worst of these is a coroner, who makes the mistake of trying to hold out for a cash payment in exchange for a key item. Hammer slams his fingers in a drawer and grins sadistically as the man screams in pain.
He is tied face down to a bed, drugged, and interrogated, but turns the tables on his captors, replacing himself on the bed with the gang boss. He then tricks a henchman into sticking a knife into the boss, thinking it was him. The scene switches to the room outside the bedroom where we hear horrible screams as the henchmen discovers his tragic mistake before being killed by Hammer.
In Kiss Me Deadly, Mike Hammer is the ultimate film noir anti-hero. Unlike the previous icon of the private detective, Humphrey Bogart who, in movies like The Maltese Falcon or The Big Sleep, only resorted to violence when pushed to it, Hammer uses violence as a first resort and seems to relish it. There is only one moment in the film where he actually uses deduction to find a clue, the rest of the time, he just slaps people until he gets what he wants. Along the way one of his best friends is killed because of their involvement and his girlfriend/gal Friday Velda, is kidnapped and nearly tortured to death.
What makes it work, aside from Aldrich's dynamic direction, is the performance of Ralph Meeker as Mike Hammer. Meeker is sleek and chill, which balances out his character's neanderthal actions. He creates a new film icon, the cool killer hero, which provides a template for Sean Connery's James Bond a few years later.
Such anti-heroes have multiplied in the intervening years, so the amoral violence of Kiss Me Deadly may seem unremarkable to viewers weaned on the John Wick series or the endless Liam Neeson dad revenge movies. But in 1955, it was shocking and nearly unprecedented. Even in the harder noirs that preceded Kiss Me Deadly, amoral and violent protagonists met their fates at the end, usually dying at the hands of the authorities. Justice was delivered, even if too late for the victims. But here, Mike Hammer faces no on screen consequences for his rampage, and the movie ends with him rescuing Velda from the apocalypse unleashed by the opening of the box. Presumably he lives on to continue his brutal work.
*I relied on Classical Film Violence by Stephen Prince for the background of this movies' relationship with the PCA.
I have the criterion edition sitting right in front of me. One of my favorite later, post-40s noir films.
This is fun to watch.
I read a lot of the Mickey Spillane thrillers, and agree that they're not great reading, and Mike's investigation tactics in the novels consist of going around intimidating people into giving him information.
I have a book called The Big Book of Noir where Bezzerides was interviewed us interviewed. He tells the story of running into Mickey Spillane in a restaurant and Spillane was mad at him over his portrayal if Hammer in the movie.