Kiss Me Deadly

(Robert Aldrich, US 1955, 106 min., 35mm)

The Noir Effect. A “dame,” a mysterious briefcase, and a murder—Robert Aldrich uses all of the elements of the classic film noir and twists them into a glorious perverted caricature. Private dick Mike Hammer (Ralph Meeker) unwittingly happens upon a naked woman (Cloris Leachman) running down the middle of the road and becomes tangled in a world of international espionage and breathtaking twists. Robert Aldrich (Vera Cruz, The Dirty Dozen) never really made a bad film, but this one secured him a place in the pantheon of the greatest.