Just intense enough to provide a much-needed diversion, just lightweight enough to make you forget about it soon after it’s over. It’s not exactly “good,” per se, but it does what it sets out to do in terms of putting us on edge, which makes it … successful?

There's a more than satisfactory amount of boom-boom in the movie's trim running time.

The movie really just wants to entertain people.

The tone of this movie is interesting -- the stakes are both dramatic and high, but it's balanced with a lot of fun, tongue and cheek dialogue.

While there have been at least one he at film noir every year between 1944 and 1957, it was getting past the golden years when legendary director Robert Aldrich stepped in and created this sleeper masterpiece. It's a Mike Hammer caper, joining him with Philip Marlowe and Sam Spade as a name who would become legendary in that genre. An incredibly macho performance by Ralph Meeker as Hammer adds his name to the list of all the great brooding, strong but basically quiet anti-hero. And at the forefront of this melodrama? None other than the versatile Cloris Leachman, as far from Phyllis Lindstrom, Frau Brucher and Nurse Diesel as you can get!Highly complex, this starts with Hammer forced to stop for the fleeing Leachman in the first 5 minutes so he doesn't run her over. He would have been lucky had he done that because the journey he ends up on is as dangerous as any film noir caper that you could imagine. Voices are heard, faces are not seen, yet the plot thickens into a stew that would clog the drains of the man made Los Angeles river. Highly complex yet never convoluted, this is a thinking man's noir, a dark vision of society so ugly that it appears to be much more modern than it is. The masterminds of crime here are not playing around, and several truly brutal murders draw Meeker further in to the web of danger. An incredible array of character players join in to provide a chilling atmosphere that turns the streets of L.A. into a dark vision of hell where no tinsel can be lit.

This film could fairly be deemed as fascist-noir. If often misogynistic, noir is rarely this brazenly phalocentric. Mike Hammer (yup, really the character's name) is a seducer of women and abuser of both genders. The audience is to applaud his every bullying gesture. The many women in the film exist to move the plot along and/ or to worship Hammer as a sex-God. He, like all good entrepreneurial Americans, is humbled only when he learns that some "alien" may be getting its hands on the destructive power that America alone is "supposed" to wield. Having said all that, I must guiltily confess my love for this film. Shot, it seems, almost entirely on location, it transports one to the lost LA of the early '50s. And, if Hammer, um, rams his way through all forms of otherness, he still encounters many forms of it on a dazzling tour through the underbelly of 1950s American urbanity. For all that is reactionary about the film, it contains strikingly unracist depictions of African-Americans compared to many other films of its era.

Before you hear the title Kiss Me Deadly and begin to enthusiastically sing the chorus of Lita Ford's super-de-duper 1980s hit of the same name, consider that the film Kiss Me Deadly is not soaked with hairspray, musical production echoes, or unironic leather. It's not a cringeworthy exercise in sweaty nostalgia; it's a fundamental work of film noir. I throw the term "film noir" around in reviews quite often, sometimes seriously and sometimes comparatively. But Kiss Me Deadly is not slight nor an imitation of the genre: along with The Big Sleep, Raw Deal, and The Third Man, it is one of the defining films of the era. Yet it subverts conformity like the plague. Sleazy private eyes and gun-toting broads are fun and all, but what if you suddenly want to embark on a wildcard journey into what resembles an abstract Lichtenstein painting? Don't listen to the crowd; just do it.The film opens in typical noir fashion. The setting is a kettle-black road in the middle of nowhere, cars zooming in-and-out with the frequency of a moviegoer seeking out Sylvester Stallone's newest movie. But cracking the deadly calm of the shot is a frantic blonde, barefoot, dressed only in a white trenchcoat. Desperate for someone to hitch her out of the nightmare she's living, she lunges in front of a speeding convertible. Inside this convertible is Mike Hammer (Ralph Meeker), a detective. The woman, Christina (Cloris Leachman), has just escaped from a local mental institution; but being caught by her doctors seems to be the last of her worries. Someone, or something, is bothering her.But her worries become a reality when a group of thugs block the road, knocking out Hammer and brutally murdering his passenger. The next day, he awakens in a hospital bed; paramedics discovered him, his car, and Christina's body residing on a rocky cliff in the early hours of the morning. Despite almost being killed in the violent series of events, though, Hammer is intrigued. Christina, it seems, was part of something bigger, something more threatening. Without hesitation, he takes the case. But as it develops, it becomes quite clear that it isn't going to pass by with the sinfully simple workings of the divorce cases Hammer usually supervises.Kiss Me Deadly has all the usual noir touches, but there's something compellingly, and unusually, artificial about the atmosphere. Everything looks as though it's part of a set (most likely due to the film's microscopic budget), but its cheapness, purposeful or not, establishes the tone even more than the material. Unlike other film noirs of the time, Kiss Me Deadly doesn't take itself seriously (even if the characters hardly ever crack a smile). It exists in the same universe as a comic strip that stars a Man with X-Ray Eyes or a bloodthirsty Martian disguised as a sex goddess. The film is distinctly fantastical; while The Big Sleep slithers by with witty dialogue and lethal underbellies, Kiss Me Deadly seems to have more in common with Attack of the 50-Foot Woman. This shouldn't suggest that it's a shoddy film; it should suggest that it's in love with itself, fond of its penny dreadful exterior, and isn't afraid to push much of its mystery onto a strange box that kills every person who opens it.When I watched Kiss Me Deadly for the first time, I didn't understand its critical acclaim. Yes, it's good, but what does it have to offer that other run-of-the-mill film noirs couldn't? Years later, my appreciation has risen by several miles. It isn't so much that Kiss Me Deadly is of superior quality; it's that it is just so, so, so ... otherworldly. Not otherworldly like the mansion Jesus probably lives in up in Heaven or Margot Robbie's beauty, but otherworldly like the realm you might find yourself in if a mirror was a door. The film is of scrumptious pulp quality, unmatched by its peers. Every scene looks like a comic book frame, every character is stock (but not quite). The poster promises "blood-red kisses!" and "white-hot thrills!" And with its campy priorities in mind, it delivers those promises with a wink and a healthy serving of idiosyncrasy.

What makes this film really special is the direction and the characters. The plot itself is not that interesting per se. I have not read the novel but the story in the film is not very coherent and the involvement of the various characters in the plot is not clear at all. Curiously, though, the director does not seem to be interested in clarifying it. Instead, he builds on the ambiguity to create a universe that revolves around something that everyone thinks so important as to sacrifice their life or that of those around them for it, but no one understands what it is.In terms of the superb direction, I think it is worth pointing out that a few ideas and styles in this film seem to have been of great influence to the work of David Lynch. On the superficial side the opening credits immediately bring to my mind the Lost Highway. The mix of noir and such high levels of ambiguity, often with allusions to the supernatural, characterises the best of Lynch's work. I even found the amalgam of Cristina and Lily/Gabriel to be a prototype to Dorothy Vallens.