Review of Kiss Me Deadly (1955) by James C — 14 Sep 2008

Time runs out for the central myth of patriarchal Christian civilisation, with the knight in shining armour in search of the Holy Grail reduced to a slugging bully cutting a swathe through the thorns of a contemporary waste land in search of "the great whatsit". Heroism is dead, the American dream ended up in the Manhattan Project and Pandora opens the box which unleashes all the evils of the world.

Robert Aldrich's brutal spin on the detective noir is filmed with a style reminiscent of a fist in the face, and cut like the slicing of a razor blade. All that's left in the end is tatters, but it's kind of hard to see what other clothes the modern hero might wear...