Published in 1952, Kiss Me, Deadly<\/em> was Mickey Spillane\u2019s sixth Mike Hammer novel, and it was the second to make it to the screen after I, the Jury<\/em> in 1953. When Kiss Me Deadly<\/em> hit theaters \u2013 70 years ago this week \u2013 it lost the comma in its title, but Aldrich and screenwriter A.I. Bezzerides preserved the rotten bastard at its core, even if they had to tone down some of the grisly violence he inflicted in print. They also shifted the setting from New York to Los Angeles and changed the \u201cgreat whatsit\u201d everybody is after from heroin to radioactive material. The latter in particular altered the story in ways that keep it arresting (and worthy of being referenced in films ranging from Repo Man<\/em> to Pulp Fiction<\/em>) while other Mike Hammer films (one of which Spillane himself starred in) slipped into obscurity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The novel and film open the same way, with a barefoot woman in a trench coat running down a lonely stretch of highway, desperate to flag down a passing car, but having no luck until she plants herself in the path of the one driven by Hammer, who has to swerve to avoid her. As she approaches him in the film, the first words out of his mouth are an angry accusation: \u201cYou almost wrecked my car,\u201d he whines. \u201cWell?\u201d When no explanation is forthcoming \u2013 she\u2019s out of breath and in a state of near-panic \u2013 he spits out a petulant \u201cget in\u201d and turns up the radio so Nat King Cole\u2019s haunting \u201cRather Have the Blues\u201d can play under the credits. These, by the way, run in reverse order, clueing viewers in that all kinds of cinematic conventions are going to be turned upside down.<\/p>\n\n\n\n One of those conventions is that a film\u2019s protagonist should be someone to root for. If Hammer\u2019s motive was purely to avenge the brutal murder of Christina, the woman he picked up, that would be one thing, but he figures the people who killed her were after something hot and he wants to beat them to it \u2013 and beat up anyone who gets in his way or doesn\u2019t come across with the information he wants fast enough. (He\u2019s forced to use his fists when Pat, a no-nonsense cop he has a slightly more convivial relationship with in the novel, revokes his P.I. license and gun permit.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n The first to get the Hammer treatment is a low-level thug who tries tailing him and gets thrown down a flight of concrete steps for his troubles. As Hammer digs deeper, he winds up amongst some unsavory characters who are counterbalanced by two who call him \u201cfriend\u201d and genuinely seem to like him. One is his mechanic, Nick, a boisterous Greek who comes to a bad end as a direct result of his association with Hammer. The other is a boxing promoter who\u2019s savvier about keeping his lips buttoned. \u201cYou can\u2019t top this,\u201d the promoter tells Hammer when he offers to pay for information. \u201cThey said they\u2019d let me breathe.\u201d Then there\u2019s his loyal secretary Velda, who loves him and is accustomed to putting herself in compromising positions. That she becomes a bargaining chip when the bad guys put the squeeze on Hammer is all part of the job.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In the final tally, Mike Hammer is responsible for the pain and suffering of no fewer than ten individuals, some of whom meet their maker shortly after making his acquaintance. (One, an out-of-work opera singer, gets off light as Hammer merely breaks one of his beloved records.) The only deaths for which he is entirely blameless are those of Christina, the puppet-master behind everything, and the requisite femme fatale, who meets the same fiery fate in the book and film, but by different means. As for Hammer himself, in both iterations it\u2019s an open question how much longer he\u2019ll be drawing breath. After surviving the death trap set for him in the first chapter, he\u2019s been living on borrowed time anyway.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cKiss Me Deadly\u201d isn\u2019t streaming, but it is available on DVD and Blu-ray from the <\/em>Criterion Collection<\/em><\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/04\/kiss-me2-909x1024.jpg\")
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