Review of Kiss Me Deadly (1955) by Simon W — 24 Feb 2009

For the first thirty minutes I hated the movie because the acting and dialogue seemed so awful, but after a while I realized that it was just the forced artificiality of a film determined to be over the top.

A huge cast of characters is dreamed up to fill every stereotype of the film noir genre while giving Mike Hammer enough people to slap around, and as the film parades all sorts of immorality it also takes greater and greater flights of strangeness.

On one level the film fails to make any sort of profound message, but for me its reward is how it excites my imagination with its memorable scenes and plot twists.