Review of Kiss Me Deadly (1955) by James-Masaki R — 23 Sep 2012

One of the most unusual in the film noir genre, "Kiss Me Deadly" is an adaptation of the Mickey Spillane book, featuring the iconic Mike Hammer character, but done so completely different from the book that even Spillane had a hard time with it when it was first released.

Instead of the usual hard boiled and smart Mike Hammer, we get a hard boiled but sometimes quite dumb Mike Hammer. A mysterious nuclear weapon takes shape as the MacGuffin, which in turn inspired the iconic MacGuffin in "Repo Man" and "Pulp Fiction", and well as the disorienting reverse credits which is also used in "Repo Man" and "THX1138".