Don't Make a Scene: Kiss Me Deadly

The Story: What's the opposite of a "Meet Cute?"

 

Whatever it is that this scene from Robert Aldrich's Kiss Me Deadly is.
 

The "meet cute" is that writerly pretense to make "boy meets girl" more interesting...or, at least, entertaining.

 

But, this set-up is as bare-bones as you get, the kind of opening Samuel Fuller used to do to slap you out of the previews and get your attention. A woman (played by the great Cloris Leachman, in her film debut), naked under a trench-coat is running down a street at night, trying to flag down cars. In a stroke of luck, both good and bad, she runs into—or is nearly run over by—Mike Hammer (played by Ralph Meeker), the most hard-bit private dick in the business. Mike isn't subtle, and the very best example of "blunt instrument." Nearly missing the girl in the street, he's torqued because she nearly wrecked his car!

 

But, he gives her a lift because she's crying and hysterical—all through the opening credits which must have annoyed the song providers (Nat King Cole!!)—but once past a roadblock manned by the dumbest cops in the world, she lightens up, to Hammer's increasing annoyance, talking about "relationships," and "self-indulgent males" and speaking with irony and stuff. Mike Hammer thinks irony is something you pump.

But, the woman, Christina Bailey, is one smart cookie. She manages, in her short time with Hammer, to provide him with all the clues to solve her mystery, while providing double duty inspiring him to see it through to the bitter end.

That last line—"If we don't make it, remember me"—haunts, as it is supposed to, but it's original to this adaptation. The movie version of Kiss Me Deadly has little to do with Mickey Spillane's novel, which is boiled down to core elements by one of the better screenwriters, A.I. Bezzerides, who hated the book and wanted to "have fun with it." In fact, the only line of dialogue taken from Spillane ("They took away my clothes to make me stay") is in this scene. Instead, Bezzerides smartens it up and toughs it out, making Spillane's protagonist the dumbest guy in the room—but also the one with the thickest skin—and creating one of the great movie McGuffins—or, as he called it, "the great whatsit"—that has been swiped by many a film-maker trying to impress.

Spillane hated it. The Kefauver Committee railed against it for corrupting youth. But, it is a cult classic, considered a high-point of film noir, even while it was mocking the stylistics of the genre.

 

Two notes: one about the extreme length of this article...it may take some time to load. 

 

And, in the videos section, I couldn't find an example of the entire opening sequence. My apologies. To compensate, I included a song that the credits song reminds me of—the Ultimate Blues Song, "I Guess I'm Just Screwed" from Naked Gun 2 1/2: The Smell of Fear.

The Set-Up: The movie's just started, so pipe down and enjoy it.

Action!

(panting)

(car drives by)

CHRISTINA: Please stop!

CHRISTINA: Please...

 

(tries to start engine)

(jazz on radio)

MIKE HAMMER: You almost wrecked my car.

HAMMER: Well?

HAMMER: Get in.

RADIO ANNOUNCER: And now, fellas, we'll hear that fine new platter by... 

RADIO ANNOUNCER: ...Nat King Cole, ''I'd Rather Have the Blues''.

 

(engine starts)

(woman pants and sobs)

♫ The night is mighty chilly

♫ And conversation seems pretty silly

♫ I feel so mean and brought
♫ I'd rather have the blues
than what I've got

♫ The room is dark and gloomy

♫ You don't know what you're doing to me

♫ Your web has got me caught
♫ I'd rather have the blues
than what I've got
(woman starts to calm down)

♫ All night I walk the city

♫ Watching the people go by

♫ I try to sing a little ditty

♫ But all that comes out is a sigh...

HAMMER: A thumb isn't good enough for you. You've gotta use your whole body.

CHRISTINA: Would you have stopped if I'd used my thumb?

HAMMER: No.

HAMMER: What's this all about?

HAMMER: I'll make a quick guess. You were out with some guy who thought ''no'' was a three-letter word.

HAMMER: I should've thrown you off that cliff back there. I might still do it.

HAMMER: Where are you headed?

CHRISTINA: Los Angeles.

CHRISTINA: Drop me off at the first bus stop.

HAMMER: Do you always go around with no clothes on?

MAN (O.F.): What's the trouble, officer?

OFFICER (O.F.): Some woman escaped from an asylum upstate. Young, wearing a trench coat.

OFFICER (O.F.): Seen anybody to fit that description?
MAN (O.F.):  No, officer.

OFFICER (O.F.): OK, move on.

HAMMER: Haven't seen a thing, officer.

HAMMER: Oh, my wife's been asleep.

OFFICER: All right, move on.

HAMMER: May I have my hand back now?

HAMMER: So you're a fugitive from the laughing house.

CHRISTINA: They forced me to go there.

CHRISTINA: Took away my clothes to make me stay.
HAMMER: Who?

CHRISTINA: I wish I could tell you that. 

CHRISTINA: I have to tell someone. When people are in trouble, they need to talk. 

CHRISTINA: But you know the old saying.

HAMMER: What I don't know can't hurt me?

(she nods)

HAMMER: This wheel doesn't feel right. It keeps pulling over.

ATTENDANT: Good evening, folks.
HAMMER: Check the right front wheel.
ATTENDANT: Yes, sir!

HAMMER: What'd you find?

ATTENDANT: Caught in the spindle.
HAMMER: We must've picked it up when we went off the road back there.

ATTENDANT: Yeah?

ATTENDANT: The only thing I ever pick up when I go off the road is poison ivy.

HAMMER: Thanks, kid.

ATTENDANT: Thank you.

CHRISTINA: Would you do me a favour, please?

ATTENDANT: Wouldn't mind at all.

CHRISTINA: Would you put a stamp on this and drop it in the mailbox for me?

ATTENDANT: Yes, ma'am. 

ATTENDANT: Anything else, ma'am?

CHRISTINA: Did you find out what was wrong with the wheel?

ATTENDANT: Oh, yeah. You picked up a piece of branch when you took that little trip off the road.

ATTENDANT: So long. Come back again.

CHRISTINA: You're angry with me, aren't you?

CHRISTINA: Sorry I nearly wrecked your pretty little car.

CHRISTINA: I was just thinking how much you can tell about a person from such simple things. Your car, for instance.

HAMMER: What kind of message does it send you?

CHRISTINA: You have only one real, lasting love.

HAMMER: Now who could that be?

CHRISTINA: You.

CHRISTINA: You're one of those self-indulgent males who thinks about nothing but his clothes, his car, himself...

CHRISTINA: Bet you do push-ups to keep your belly hard.

HAMMER: You against good health or something?

CHRISTINA: I could tolerate flabby muscles in a man if it would make him more friendly.

CHRISTINA: You're the kind of person who... 

CHRISTINA: ...never gives in a relationship, who only takes.

CHRISTINA: Ah, woman. The incomplete sex.

CHRISTINA: And what does she need to complete her?

CHRISTINA: Why, man, of course. Wonderful man.

HAMMER: All right, all right, let it go.

HAMMER: That bus stop will be coming up soon and I don't even know your name.

CHRISTINA: You forget, I'm a loony from the laughing house. 

CHRISTINA: All loonies are dangerous.

CHRISTINA: D'you ever read poetry?

CHRISTINA: No, of course you wouldn't.

CHRISTINA: Christina Rossetti wrote love sonnets. I was named after her.

HAMMER: Christina?

CHRISTINA: Yes, Mike. 

CHRISTINA: I got your name from the registration certificate, Mr Hammer.

CHRISTINA: Get me to that... 

CHRISTINA: ...bus stop and you can forget you ever saw me.

CHRISTINA: If we don't make that bus stop...

HAMMER: We will.

CHRISTINA: If we don't...

CHRISTINA: ...remember me.

Kiss Me Deadly

Words by A.I. Bezzerides

Pictures by Ernest Laszlo and Robert Aldrich

Kiss Me Deadly is available on DVD and Blu-Ray from the Criterion Collection.