The Kiss of Death

Often it is possible for a film to be made on a small budget and turn out very well. Take Clerks, or even the first Star Wars as examples. Most of the time, though, the film reeks of its low budget. Kiss Me Deadly is one such example. Kiss Me Deadly is a classic example of film noire, the movie was filmed in a month on a very low budget, with fairly unknown actors. Sure, the effects were cheesy and some of the set pieces were questionable, but all in all this just added to it effect. In my mind, none of these things detracted from the quality of the film. The one thing that I disliked in the film was nothing inconsequential, I hated the script. It seemed to me that the film was completely mindless (and not in a good way). Mike Hammer was a self-absorbed sadist and didn't really do any thinking in the entire movie. Everything happened to fall into his hands while he was trying to figure the mystery. The only real thinking he did was horribly contrived: somehow looking at the first lines of a poem helped put everything into place. As much as I love a mindless film every once and a while, Kiss Me Deadly just plain bugged me. I can't help but notice all the logical fallacies in films like this, and eventually I just start to focus on the loopholes, which tarnishes my memory of the film.