35mm print! Plays as part of the I Wake Up Dreaming series, hosted by noir expert Elliot Lavine.
KISS ME DEADLY (1955) Mickey Spillane's brutal bedroom dick, Mike Hammer, slugs and slogs his way through the dankest alleys and sewers of Los Angeles in his quest for the "great whatsit," an elusive and explosive key to nothing short of the end of the world. This is one of noir's most conspicuously adult films, visually and thematically innovative, senselessly coarse. And even though the film's subliminal messaging is distantly removed from the original novel, it nevertheless remains the ultimate reflection of noir's fatalistic powers during the deeply paranoid 1950s.
Starring Ralph Meeker, Albert Dekker, Maxine Cooper, Paul Stewart, Gaby Rogers, Jack Elam, and Cloris Leachman. Photographed by the extraordinary Ernest Laszlo. Directed by Robert Aldrich.
Guest passes accepted.