Kiss me deadly

A chance encounter leading to, what is referred to in the film as, the search for ‘the great whatsit’, follows the conventional investigative structure of the private eye film. However, the bravura visual style, the array of characterisation and the aural fabric of allusion and metaphor add meaning to this basic structure, marking the film as the climax of the initial noir cycle. The private eye, Mike Hammer, is portrayed as a fascistic anti-hero ultimately caught between big crime and big government. Aldrich and Bezzerides consciously denounce Spillane’s sleazy creation injecting in its place an atmosphere of cold war hysteria, an implicit critique of the ‘end justifies the means’ mentality.