At this point in time, I've now seen quite a few of the various realizations of Mickey Spillane's New York City private detective Mike Hammer, They all have their pluses and minuses of one sort or another. Let's run them down. Leaving Kiss Me Deadly for last.
Mike Hammer is a fictional hyper hard boiled private eye created by the American author Mickey Spillane in the 1947 He fashioned Hammer out of an aborted comic book character called Mike Danger. Hardass Hammer carried a .45 Colt M1911A1 in a shoulder harness, and has a voluptuous secretary named Velda.
Spillane's first novel was I, The Jury, it was followed by The Twisted Thing [written in 1948] but not published until 1966. Spillane's next chronologically published novel was My Gun is Quick (1950), followed by Vengeance Is Mine! (1950), One Lonely Night (1951), The Big Kill (1951), and Kiss Me, Deadly (1952). Spillane then went on a ten year hiatus, returning to writing in 1962.
The on screen realization I haven't seen at this point in time is Mickey Spillane's 'Mike Hammer!' (1954) a 26 minute TV pilot that starred Brian Keith. It was screened in a special program at The Roxie theater and was discussed on The Silver Screen Oasis "Tonight, as part of the closing night program of our TV NOIR series at the Roxie, we’ll be presenting the insanely rare unsold 1954 pilot episode of MIKE HAMMER, written and directed by Blake Edwards and starring perennial fan favorite Brian Keith in the title role. It’s an uninhibited and sublime slab of noir brilliance and, for my money, the jewel in this particularly thorny crown of delights.... Chief among the many components that make this show work so well is Brian Keith. Belligerent, loud, threatening; he’s got Hammer down to the last nail. His voiceover propels the action and even the most seemingly preposterous lines seem absolutely right: “The city was quiet and the sharp wind off the river smelled like rain.” He hits hard and when he’s hit, he’s hit just as hard. In one brawl with a pair of hoods, he winds up with a stinging shiner that he wears throughout the rest of the show as a badge of honor. Nearly matching him in sheer manic anger and volume is Robert Bice as Pat Chambers, his adversarial ally on the force and their contentious interaction throughout the story is tough and believable. Edwards’ script is sharp and his direction well paced, vastly superior to most television crime dramas in 1954. George Diskant, who photographed it, gave it a highly cinematic look despite being shot on a typically meager TV budget. MIKE HAMMER, an unsold TV pilot that hardly anyone has seen, rivals the best of his 40s noirs!
But what amazes most about this stunning little torpedo is how it obviously served as a blueprint for one of the most influential American films of the 50s—KISS ME DEADLY—made one year later by the same producer. A number of specific moments jump right out; Hammer viciously banging the back of a thug’s head against a brick wall who then slowly slides down to the ground unconscious is one of the most jolting. The relationship between Muuse and his two henchmen is an uncanny first incarnation of the Carl Evello / Charlie Max / Sugar Smallhouse triad from KMD. Don Harvey, as Ray Kittle, Muuse’s personal hit-man does the lion’s share of the heavy violence in this pilot and he’s especially brutal in his savage brawls with Hammer. And Virginia Lee (she could have easily been cast as Evello’s half-sister “Friday” in KMD) as Muuse’s kept girl is a major revelation, emerging as a key character in the story, giving it—and Hammer—surprisingly unexpected depth." ( Dewey1960 » July 20th, 2011, 11:13 am)
I, The Jury (1953) became the first of Mickey Spillane's Mike Hammer Detective series to be made into a movie. It was also during the initial 3D craze. The Hammer in I, The Jury is a no holds barred bull in a china shop type of PI. Spillane wrote Mike Hammer as the traditional Pulp/Detective but he pushed the bubble in his stories with excessive, over the top aggressive sexuality of his women characters going easily 20 years ahead of his time. The films wouldn't be able to be that explicit enough to do Mike Hammer justice until the late 1960's. By then the ability to do visually stylized noir with its great stable of Hollywood Studio character actors is gone. It was like two ships passing in the night.
Now to be honest this is the first film with director of photography John Alton, where I've been a bit letdown, the compositions don't stand out. The DVDr version I saw seems too washed out and gray-ish compared to his usual inky blacks and silvery white work. It could be the fault of, or something to do with the 3D process.
Who knows how many copies removed it is from the source print. But there are a lot of sequences that are not very stylistically lighted at all and there are very few establishing NYC location shots compared to other Noirs set in NYC (not one skyline shot, bridge shot, nothing, street shots of building entrances are square on, no 3/4 shots showing some of the street perspective, very uninteresting camera angles for the most part). For a Mike Hammer NYC based film this is a big mistake. Think of all the great NYC city local based Noirs, Where The Sidewalk Ends, The Naked City, Kiss of Death, Side Street, The Phantom Lady, The Window, The Dark Corner that gave you a real feel for the city, you don't get that here.
Next up chronologically was our featured film Kiss Me Deadly (see below).
My Gun Is Quick (1957) I caught off Netflix. Robert Bray puts in a passable portrayal as Mike Hammer. He's Hammer-esque but again here is a case where the action is moved to California and the talent to make an acceptable Noir-ish stylized Mike Hammer film is noticeably lacking, it looks made on the cheap, it plays like a TV film and is nowhere near Aldrich's film noir masterpiece.
The broads Whitney Blake, Patricia Donahue, Pamela Duncan, prostitute Jan Chaney, and stripper Genie Coree are again "hammer-tomically" correct but again as in both "I The Jury" (1953), and in "Kiss Me Deadly" (1955) the slightly gratuitous sexuality which should be a touchstone in any Mike Hammer based film is PG-13 if even that. To put it bluntly the "literal" Hammer babes (save for Velda) usually peel for Mike at every opportunity.
Mickey Spillane's Mike Hammer (1958-59) was a TV series starring Darren McGavin, quite a few of the episodes were penned by Frank Kane.
Kane himself was another hard boiled author of the Johnny Liddell detective novels. Liddell was also a NYC P.I. The Hammer character in this series becomes a Hammer/Liddell composite the result of which is more like Hammer lite. Hammer has no secretary Velda, but does have a plethora of hammer-tomically correct babes in almost every episode. There are a lot of interesting, run of the mill, realistic, routine type cases involving, missing persons, con artists, small time crooks, bookies, chorus girls, and blackmail that are believable.
Quite a few episodes are noir-ish, there are a lot of fistfights and some quite impressive gun battles. McGavin's Hammer here though, uses a .38 caliber revolver most of the time and wears a pork pie hat with a large hatband. The pluses here are quite a few on location shooting, this is the New York City I remember quite a few vestiges of the late 40s close to the correct time period as the original novels.
The Girl Hunters (1963) Has got some positives & negatives.
Positives:
Some New York City establishing & location shots, this was again "my" city, the 1963 Manhattan I remember as a kid, the NYPD black, white & olive green squad cars (BTW they changed to today's white & blue color scheme during 1973-74), the Checker yellow cabs, the store fronts. Mike Hammer in fairly close to his correct environment.
Shirley Eaton, "hammer-tomically" correct in every way, she is the femme fatale of the piece and a knockout. For those of you not familiar with the name she later became the iconic girl in gold in the James Bond flick Gold Finger. She also has a memorable final denouement. Also Noir vet Loyd Nolan makes a nice supporting appearance.
Negatives:
Not really filmed in the Film Noir style and despite the spliced in NYC establishing shots, the film was actually shot in London, UK. and you can tell. Mickey Spillane himself plays Hammer, like some kind of vanity project, now if Spillane was an actor it may have been better, he looks, compared to Darren McGavin a bit ridiculous in the pork-pie hat. No Velma. It could have used more of everything, it's a bit too sparse as it is, more interesting interiors, transitions, shots, lighting, camera angles, more time with bit part characters, see Kiss Me Deadly as a comparison.
Score is a bit way too one note and somewhat overpowering where it is used. I prefer "Harlem Nocturne" which was used as the main theme in the Keach TV Hammer series, it just edges out "Rift Blues" used in McGavin's Mike Hammer.
And what is with this fetish with bullets, and linking crimes with bullets fired by the same gun, this film and I, The Jury (1953) use this device and you got to think to yourself that any criminal with a brain is going to get rid of the murder weapon and not conveniently keep reusing the same gun over and over. Not enough sex & graphic violence, again the books are still ahead of the films in this department.
Let's pause here and reflect on a lost opportunity. The Motion Picture Production Code fizzled out around 1967-68, here the window of opportunity opened for a Mike Hammer production that would have been free to exploit the all violence and used all the women in various stages of undress it could dream of. The closest we get to a Hammer like character that hits on all cylinders is his San Francisco facsimile Dirty Harry. No Mike Hammer films for an 18 year hiatus.
Margin For Murder - TV movie (1981) I'll give this one credit for being almost completely shot in the grittier neighborhoods of New York City, and it has plenty of night shots, decrepit building interiors, and to boot, Hammer actually wears a fedora in a couple of sequences, bravo, better in those areas than next years Assante's film which seemed a bit too antiseptic, location wise, in that respect.
But again we are hampered by being in the contemporary modern era with a discotheque and its music and all the visions of "Saturday Night Fever" that that, conjures up. Kevin Dodson at least plays Hammer as tough as Assante, and the babes are again "hammer-tomically" correct.
Not as much graphic violence and no nudity (its a TV film after all) as next years I, The Jury would have. This film also has a Nelson Riddle score that pales in comparison to Bill Conti's in 1982's remake of I, The Jury. 7/10
I, The Jury (1982) It took 30 some odd years for a film to really do full justice to the zeitgeist of a Mickey Spillane novel. The best looking and true Noir adaptation is still Kiss Me Deadly (1955) with Ralph Meeker, but it was hampered by being made while the Hays Code was still in effect. Right from the opening credits of I, The Jury (1982) you know you are in Mike Hammer land with the emphasis on women and the Colt .45 automatic, Broads & Bullets, Girls and Guns (both kinds). I’m sure graphic novelist Frank Miller (Sin City) had to have seen this graphic opening sequence in three colors black, white, and red, and was influenced by it. If not, it predates that style by 10 years.
This version has Hammer’s office located above Times Square, set in the post Vietnam 80’s. In this version Velda who in the novels was also a licensed detective holds her own doing double duty as a competent secretary/associate, and quasi love interest, she shows flashes of jealousy when Mike returns to the office disheveled and bruised from his escapades.
What’s not to like. Barely Neo Noir if that. The one noir lit sequence that I do remember was when Hammer goes to pay respects to Jack's wife. Most of the film is too brightly lit. There is also no first person narrative. The cinematography is adequate, but very pedestrian, nothing stylistic.
Armand Assante as Hammer hews closer to the Ralph Meeker look than what you picture Mike Hammer should look like (for me that would have been the great Charles McGraw), but he has the machismo and misogynistic qualities right, lol.
Setting the story in the post Vietnam 1980’s takes away the mix of legitimate nightclubs, and ballrooms with dirtier, grittier, sleazier, New York that was on the horizon that late fifties to early Seventies period. By the 80's Times Square was on the brink of redevelopment.
There’s unexplainably still no street level connection with Hammer to the Burlesque Joints, XXX Movie Theaters, The “Live Nude Girl” Peep Shows, the Arcades, the newspaper stands, the street vendors, the con games, the Dime A Dance Ballrooms, the bums, the panhandlers, the hookers, etc., etc. 1971's Shaft did it better. New York was starting to lose that real transitional ambiance, too bad. I remember The 42nd St. Times Square area ridden with the above in 1970, and by the time I returned in 1996 it had changed to Disneyland. Minor quibbles. the film is a 7-8/10
Murder Me Murder You (1983) and More Than Murder (1984) (TV films), with Stacy Keach as Mike Hammer, nice New York location work and they shot in the winter with lingering piles of snow, on the streets and icing the buildings, but once again Hammer is depicted too far out of his time period, Keach is adequate as Mike Hammer and Tanya Roberts as Velda is once again hammer-tomically correct, some of the supporting cast are interesting but the disco era is all wrong. At least Keach is wearing a fedora.
Its gets to the point that there are no average women around to "stack" them up against, there is even a mud wrestling sequence, but being a TV film they are wearing bikinis. Who did the casting on this The Playboy Club? These films led to The New Mike Hammer TV Series (1984–1989) another TV movie Mike Hammer: Murder Takes All (1989) and a another TV Series Mike Hammer, Private Eye (1997–1998). I've only seen a few episodes of both series, but for me the era difference makes them uninteresting.
The best New York based Hammer in close to the correct time period was TV's Mickey Spillane's Mike Hammer set in 1958-1959.
Which brings us to what is still the best overall Mike Hammer film Kiss Me Deadly (1955).
It's a Classic Film Noir directed masterfully by Robert Aldrich. It's one of the first of the Tail Fin Noirs where you get a sample of the new Pop Jet Set to come. It's also a sort of interesting take on Pandora's Box. It has a great a screenplay by A.I. Bezzerides along with some additions by (uncredited) Robert Aldrich. The story is based on trashmaster Mickey Spillane's Kiss Me, Deadly with it's iconoclast, misogynist P.I. Mike Hammer. It's similar in the following respect to the Darren McGavin - Hammer TV 1958-59 series which was also based on Spillane's character but was composited with novelist Frank Kane's Johnny Liddell also a NYC P.I. The result in that series is Hammer lite.
In Kiss Me Deadly A.I. Bezzerides' alterations include transposing Hammer to Los Angeles, gone is the .45 Colt M1911A1, the trench coat and fedora/pork pie hat, and changing the narcotics angle in the original novel into a more, then current issue, of a stolen sample of fissionable material, dubbed by Velda as the "great whatzit?" Hammer is an antihero here, no shining knight, he's out for what's in it for him.
It's got loads of visual style that convey a moody atmosphere that smacks ya upside the head right from the get go.
Darkness. Bare running feet. Pavement. A naked woman in a trench coat sprinting down the highway. Breathing heavy. Trying to flag down a car. Desperate. She stands on the centerline and forces a porsche skidding in a cloud of dust off the road.
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| Christina Bailey (Cloris Leachman) |
The Jag has stalled out. The radio tinkles West Coast jazz. He steps on the starter. Spinning not catching. The woman comes over. Hammer sneers. He's still a Hammer with attitude. You know that if that porsche had started the woman would be picking gravel out of her teeth and crotch.
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| "You almost wrecked my car!" (Ralph Meeker as Mike Hammer |
Christina Bailey: [panting out of breath]
Mike Hammer: Get in!
Christina gets in. The Jag starts. They drive off. Nat King Cole croons. Appropriately it's "I'd rather have the blues, than what I've got." The credits roll from top to bottom. Style!
Mike and Christina drive down the highway. Mike asks questions.
Mike Hammer: What's this all about? I'll make a quick guess. You were out with some guy who thought "no" was a three-letter word. I should have thrown you off that cliff back there. I might still do it. Where are ya headed?
Christina Bailey: Los Angeles. Drop me off at the first bus stop.
[Mike notices Christina is flashing some skin]
Mike Hammer: Do you always go around with no clothes on?
Mike Hammer: So you're a fugitive from the laughing house.
Christina Bailey: Get me to that bus stop and forget you ever saw me. If we don't make it to the bus stop...
Mike Hammer: We will.
Christina Bailey: If we don't, remember me.
The Jaguar XK120 gets run off the road by a 1954 Cadillac Fleetwood 75. Hammer laying on a box spring mattress, wakes up out of a doped up stuper to a woman screaming hysterically. Somebody is taking a set of channel locks to a nude Christina. We only see her twitching legs.
An unconscious Mike, along with Christina's body, are placed in Mikes Jag and then pushed by the Caddy through a wooden guardrail and off a hill. The jag bursts into flames.
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| Tail fins |
He pimps out a willing Velma to straying husbands, takes compromising photographs of them together and presents the evidence to the wives to force favorable settlements.
Hammer is sort of like Spillane who pimped out the Hammer character to whoever gave him cash for the rights. Hammer for a price is obviously open to interpretation.
The last paperback cover left, with the girl in a light chenille bathrobe holding a gun on Mike Hammer and this sequence below in Kiss Me Deadly, of Lily Carver aka Gabrielle played by Gabby Rodgers, doing the same below, depicts events in the actual end of the novel. However in the film it is another animal entirely and it's just another interesting sequence in the spiral to the denouement. I'll go back to the end of the novel at the end of the piece.
So Mike survives, waking up in a hospital with Velda and Pat Murphy gazing down at him.
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| Velda and Lt. Pat Murphy |
Lt. Pat Murphy: Three days ago, I was figuring I'd have to finance a new tux to bury the corpse.
Mike recovers enough for Pat to try and get some answers, something is obviously up. Pat is being quite evasive and Mike is lucid enough to pick up on it.
When Mike is discharged from the hospital he is immediately picked up by Federal Agents and whisked away for more grilling. They do most of the talking, belittling Hammer for their own amusements. They are getting their jollies for the week. They are portrayed overly priggish. They actually come off looking worse than Hammer, you wonder if the lead agent (Robert Cornthwaite) who remarks "open the window" is wearing a la Hoover women's underwear .
Mike Hammer: All right you got me convinced I'm a real stinker. Now if that's all you got on your minds I'd like to get along home.
F.B.I. Agent: Yes I know, your anxious to get back to your life's work. You're free to go. [Hammer gets up] Open a window.
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| You are a bedroom dick |
Mike Hammer: he was a cute kid. She had a way of needlin' a guy. There'll be a long pause before those characters get a line on who killed her.
Lt. Pat Murphy: They aren't fast enough, you could do it a lot better. Is that it. Now Mike who do you think you are?
Mike Hammer: What's the pitch Pat?
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| Lt. Pat Murphy lt and Hammer |
Mike Hammer: An ordinary little girl gets killed and it rings bells all the way to Washington. There's gotta be a pitch... I picked up a girl. If she hadn't gotten in my way, I wouldn't have stopped. She must be connected with somethin' big.
Lt. Pat Murphy: Mike, why don't you tell us what you know? Then step aside like a nice fella and let us do our job.
Mike Hammer: What's in it for me?
Mike picks up from his friend and mechanic Nick a rental 1950 MG TD to continue his investigation.
Later in Mike's apartment Mike and Velda discuss the recent events.... Mike asks what she found out about Christina.
Velda: Christina Georgina Rossetti. Poetess, English, born 1830, died 1894. Your Christina was being held in that hospital for interrogation... What's the point of all this, if it's any of my business?
Mike Hammer: She told me if I dropped her off at the bus station, I could forget her. But if she didn't make it, she said, "Remember me."
Velda: So, remember her. She's dead. But I'm not dead. Hey, remember me?
Mike Hammer: Yeah. I remember you from somewhere.
Velda tells Mike that a man named Ray Diker called while he was in the hospital. Diker is a newspaper science editor who disappeared and went into hiding. He's holed up in a place on Flower Street.
Mike picks up from his friend and mechanic Nick a rental 1950 MG TD to continue his investigation.
He drives to Flower, picks up a tail. Spotting him Mike leads him into a trap. When the man pull a knife, Hammer is ready. He beats his head against a wall, then throws him down the stairs above the Third Street tunnel.
Mike locates Diker in a flop on Flower near Chinatown. He has been severely beaten. Terrified Diker tells Mike that Christina's last name was Bailey and gives him her last known address.
When Mike visits the Queen Anne boarding house on Bunker Hill where Christina lived, he learns that her roommate, Lily Carver, is gone and left no forwarding address. He grabs a book of poetry Sonnets of Christina Georgina Rossetti. A moving man Mike encounters outside on the street tells Mike he knows where Lily moved to. He whispers the Jalisco Hotel.
When Mike enters her flop, Lily is pointing a gun at Mike. She tells him she is frightened after strange men came to question her after Christina's death. Again this scene with different dialog is the original novels ending sequence.
When Mike gets back to his apartment he gets a call offering a gift if he will keep his nose out of the Christina affair. In the AM Mike finds a brand new 1954 Chevrolet Corvette C1 parked behind the MG. Mike, suspicious gets Nick to go over it. They find two bombs the "obvious" dynamite one on the starter meant to be found, and another pip bomb attached somehow to the speedometer designed to detonate when the car reaches a certain speed.
Mike asks Nick to check around to see who may have wired the Corvette. Mike heads to Velda's.
Mike Hammer: We're gonna steer away from these penny-ante divorce cases for a while. I've got a line on something better. That girl I picked up was mixed up in something big.
Velda: And a cut of something big could be something big.
Mike Hammer: I want you to find out all you can about her.
Velda: First, you find a little thread, the little thread leads you to a string, and the string leads you to a rope, and from the rope you hang by the neck. What kind of a girl was she, this friend of yours, Christina?
She also tells Mike that Diker called her again, dropping more names connected with Christina. When Mike checks out these leads he finds out that there were two more automobile "accidents" connected with Christina. The same M.O.
Mike visits a friend Eddie Yeager a boxing gym trainer. He asks about a fighter named Kowalski. He was thrown in fornt of a truck. Eddie warns Mike that two mob torpedos Charlie Max and Sugar Smallhouse are making the Eddie tells nobody about anything. They work for Carl Evelo a mobster.
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| Evelo right, and his pool party |
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| Jack Lambert as sugar Smallhouse, Jack elam as Charlie Max, and Leigh Snowden as Cheesecake |
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| Friday (Marian Carr ) |
Friday: Who are you?
Mike Hammer: Who am I? Who are you?
Friday: I'm Friday. I'd have been named Tuesday if I'd been born on Tuesday. I'm Carl's sister, half-sister. Same mother, different father. You know, you're not like the others - Carl's friends, I mean.
Mike Hammer: Maybe that's because I'm not his friend.
Friday: Oh, wonderful. Then you can be my friend, all mine; nothing to do with Carl.
Inside the mansion Friday comes on to Mike who declines. Mike confronts Evelo after easily taking down Sugar Smallhouse and frightening Charlie Max. Evelo tries to bribe Mike who tells him no dice.
Mike next visits the Hillcrest Apartments another converted flop hotel to question Carmen Trivaco who tells Mike that his friend Nicholas Raymondo was an atomic scientist who had an important secret before he was killed in a pedestrian/auto accident.
Mike heads back to the Hotel Jalisco where he finds Lily hiding in the basement. He takes her to his apartment to hide her there. When Nick is killed by hydraulic jack, Velda is kidnapped and the real Lily Carver's body was found floating in the Pacific it all goes Noirsville.
Noirsville
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| Nick Dennis as Nick Va Va Voom |
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| Modern call answering for 1955 |
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| Juano Hernandez as Eddie Yeager and Mike |
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| Clay Street and Angels Flight |
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| Fortunio Bonanova as Carmen Trivago |
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| Mady Comfort as Nightclub Singer |
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| Albert Dekker as Dr. G.E. Soberin |
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| Percy Helton as Doc Kennedy |
Lt. Pat Murphy: Now listen, Mike. Listen carefully. I'm going to pronounce a few words. They're harmless words. Just a bunch of letters scrambled together. But their meaning is very important. Try to understand what they mean. "Manhattan Project, Los Alamos, Trinity."
I mentioned earlier the novels ending sequence. It has Mike who has just shot Dr. Soberin dead, confronted by Lily Carver who has just emerged from an alcohol bath wearing a thin robe.
"Beautiful Lily with hair as white as snow. Her mouth a scarlet curve that smiled. Her body a tight bundle of lush curves that swelled and moved under a light terrycloth robe. Lovely Lily who brought the sharpness of the alcohol bath in with her so that it wet her robe so that there was nothing there, no hill or valley no shadow that didn't come out....
Gorgeous Lily with my .45 in her hand." (She shoots him in the side) On the floor in pain Mike fumbles for a cigarette.
"I thought I almost loved you once. More than . . . him. But I didn't Mike. He would take me as I was. He was the one who gave me life, at least, after. . . it happened. he was the doctor. I was the patient. I loved him. You would have been disgusted with me. I can see your eyes now, Mike they would have been revolted....
Look at me Mike. How would you like to kiss me now. You wanted to before... You wanted to kiss me . . . so kiss me."
Her fingers slipped through the belt of the robe, opened it. Her hands parted it slowly. . . until I could see what she was really like. I wanted to vomit worse than before. I wanted to let my guts come up and felt my belly retching.
She was a horrible caricature of a human! There was no skin, just a disgusting mass of twisted puckered flesh from her knees to her neck making a picture of gruesome freakishness that made you want to shut your eyes against it.
The cigarette almost fell out of my mouth. The lighter shook in my hand but I got it open.
"Fire did it Mike. Do you think I pretty Now?" She laughed and I could hear the insanity in it. The gun pressed into my belt as she kneeled forward bringing the revulsion with her. "You're going to die now. . . but first you can do it. Deadly. . . deadly. . . kiss me."
The smile never left her mouth and before it was on me I thumbed the lighter and in the moment of time before the scream blossoms into the wild cry of terror she was a mass of flame tumbling on the floor with the blue flames of alcohol turning her white hair into a black char and her body convulsing under the agony of it. The flames were teeth that ate, ripping and tearing, into scars of other flames, and her voice the shrill sound of death on the loose.
I looked, looked away, The door was closed and maybe I had enough left to make it."
The End
Hammer in this incarnation still a sort of bull in a china shop. He gets quite far in his investigation even though he doesn't possess all the crucial facts. He's quite thuggish, threatening witnesses smacking around reluctant informers, and quite easily handles mob enforcers.
The cinematography was by Ernest Laszlo (D.O.A. (1949), M (1951)), the Music was by Frank De Vol. The film stars:
Ralph Meeker as Mike Hammer
Albert Dekker as Dr. G.E. Soberin
Paul Stewart as Carl Evello
Juano Hernandez as Eddie Yeager
Nick Dennis as Nick Va Va Voom
Wesley Addy as Lt. Pat Murphy
Marian Carr as Friday
Maxine Cooper as Velda
Cloris Leachman as Christina Bailey
Gaby Rodgers as Gabrielle (Lilly Carver)
Nick Dennis as Nick
Jack Lambert as Sugar Smallhouse
Jack Elam as Charlie Max
Jerry Zinneman as Sammy
Leigh Snowden as Cheesecake
Percy Helton as Doc Kennedy
Mady Comfort as jazz singer
Strother Martin as Harvey Wallace
Kitty White as Vocalist in club
James Seay as FBI agent
Bing Russell as Police Detective
Paul Richards as Paul Richards
Sam Balter as Radio Announcer (voice)
Eddie Beal as Sideman
Marjorie Bennett as Manager
Fortunio Bonanova as Carmen Trivago
Ben Morris as Radio Announcer
Leonard Mudie as Athletic Club Clerk
One of the high watermarks of the latter end of Classic Film Noir,. It boasts some excellent cinematography combined with inventive editing. It uses Bunker Hill to great advantage while firing on all cylinders and moving along at a quick pace, it has an ingenious sound design that at times shocks by being purposely out of sync which adds to the ambiguousness of the inky black nightmare-ish story. It has a great cast of Classic Noir Vets that provide cinematic memory complimented with some relative unknowns and newbies. It builds suspense in increments with events finally spiraling out of control in a climactic nuclear meltdown. Screen caps from Criterion DVD 10/10
Nice review of all the different Spillane movies. Really, there hasn't been a definite one. I, The Jury would be great if it weren't for Biff Elliott. My Gun is Quick is too tame, and even Kiss Me Deadly obviously had to tone it down.
ReplyDeleteUnfortunately, not even nowadays we'd get to see the real Mike Hammer. Back then it was the Production Code prohibiting it, now it's Political Correctness. Mike Hammer would make the snowflakes cry.
The ideal time would have been right after 1967 at the demise of the MPPC.
ReplyDeleteThe only way to do it now and in the correct time period would be like a graphic novel Sin City treatment.
Read all of the Mickey Spillane books.
ReplyDelete