Review of Kiss Me Deadly (1955) by Veronique K — 27 Oct 2008

"kiss me deadly" is not the conventional noir which populates in 1940s with detective hero scenarios, and contrarily our opportunistic protagonist could be the meanest dubious anti-hero who sticks to his chauvinist womanizing lifestyle without redeeming mercy. and the catastrophe at last is the metaphoric phobia for the atomic age when chemical explosion is the deadliest phemonal crisis then. the femme fatale is ruthlessly trigger-happy pandora who unravel the lethal box of doom. the world surrounded within "kiss me deadly" is not entirely realistic decadence for the crimes of passion but a crooked labyrinth where man's avarice dominates, and the cynicism of such macabre is timelessly contemporary.

The profile of our male protagonist is cleverly anchored within the dialogues at the opening sequence while a female asylum inmate hitchhikes his two-seat chic roadster: "a self-indulgent male who cares nothing but his clothes, his car, who only takes but never gives in a relationship."....then the horrid murder under the disguise of car wreck follows after a brutal kidnap. so this self-indulgent male happens to be a bedroom dick, who philanders his own girlfriend to profit from divorce cases, is eager to investigate the truth of the matter on his own, NOT for the sake of performing justice but to gain an angle of earning quick cashes. the process of mayhem is highly practiced within the procedue of obtaining what he yearns to know. so this self-obessed man intimates everyone involed and embraces to kiss every woman to attain his purposes. and that includes whoring his own sappy girlfriend AGAIN. BUT his effortless greed is futile since what he's after turns out to be an appartus of apolytic condemnation.

This is an universe running amok with its sinister overpower, and its lack of heroic savior is modern syptom of aloof amorality which detonates the explosion of pandora's box to ruminate man's own misdemeanors. ralph meeker's self-assumptious chauvinist ends up being a dope who takes the bullet of punishment from a guiling female con, so he retreats into his maternal girlfriend's bossom to do away with the forseeing descent of pandora's evil venom...could he be immue?

Needless to say, the illuminator is ralph meeker's devilish womanizer as well as gaby rodger who emanates a modern sense of diabolism which rivals lena olin in "romeo is bleeding"...there's not much realism in "kiss me deadly" but an intriguing concept expressed in an utterly self-centered perspective.