Kiss Me Deadly or properly Kiss Me, Deadly (1955) is a film noir drama produced and directed by Robert Aldrich starring Ralph Meeker. The screenplay was written by A. I. Bezzerides based on the Mickey Spillane Mike Hammer mystery novel Kiss Me, Deadly. Spillane ordered Signet Books to pulp 50,000 copies of the book because they left the comma out.
Kiss Me Deadly is considered a classic of the noir genre. References (usually to the glowing briefcase) appear in such diverse films as Steven Spielberg's Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981), Alex Cox's Repo Man (1984), Quentin Tarantino's Pulp Fiction (1994), David Lynch's Lost Highway (1997) and Richard Kelly's Southland Tales (2007).
In 1999, Kiss Me Deadly was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant."
The film grossed $726,000 in the States and a total of $226,000 overseas.
Tough L.A. private eye Mike Hammer gives a ride to Christina, a frightened young woman he finds running along the road one night. His car is run off the road by unseen thugs. Hammer is knocked out and Christina is tortured in an unsuccessful attempt to get information from her. They are put back into Hammer's car which then is forced off a cliff. Hammer wakes up in the hospital. Velda, his trusty secretary, informs him that Christina is dead. Pat Chambers, Mike's policeman friend, tells him to stay off the case, but Mike thinks it might be a big story--meaning big money for him--because the FBI is interested. He, Velda, and Nick, his garage mechanic friend, start investigating in hopes of finding out why Christina was killed. Written by alfiehitchie
