SIFF and Greg Olson Productions Present
L.A. NOIR
shadows in paradise
Kiss Me Deady (1955) Director Robert Aldrich: Kiss Me Deadly at its depth, had to do with the McCarthy era and the ends justifying the means and the kind of materialistic society that paid off in choice rewards, sometimes money, sometimes girls, sometimes other things. The film is everything I hoped it would be and more. Writer-director-critic Francois Truffaut: We have loved films that had only one idea, or twenty, or even fifty. In Robert Aldrich’s films, it is not unusual to encounter a new idea with each shot. In Kiss Me Deadly the inventiveness is so rich we don’t know what to look at—the images are almost too full, too fertile. It’s such an intense experience that we want it to last for hours. It is easy to picture its maker as a man overflowing with vitality. This is the film of a young director who is not yet worrying about restraint. He works with a freedom and gaiety. Author Barry Gifford (source novel for David Lynch’s Wild at Heart, Lynch and Gifford wrote the screenplay for Lynch’s Lost Highway): Mike Hammer doesn’t know who he’s fooling with, or what. He keeps going back to a mysterious house, coming up the long, curving stairway. A frightened girl in a room. Hammer is gray, dark gray, confused, looking for the light. No sun except for what’s packed in a box. Kiss Me Deadly is one of the greatest American movies ever made, also one of the scariest. Best seen at three A.M. Black and white, mostly black. From Mickey Spillane’s novel: The rain took me back again, put its arms around me and held tight. I became part of the night, part of the wet, part of the noise and life of the city. I could hear it laughing at me, a low, dull rumble with a sneer in it. A picture was forming. I couldn’t make out the details. A picture of a grim organization that stretched its tentacles all over the world. An organization fed on the money of destruction, and one tentacle was starving. The millions of dollars sent to feed it arrived, but were hidden somewhere. The tentacle wanted it bad. It was after the food with all the fury of its hunger, ready to do anything in the final, convulsive gesture of survival.
September 10, 2025
Directed by: Robert Aldrich Screenplay by: A. I. Bezzerides from Mickey Spillane’s novel Cinematography by: Ernest Laszlo Music by: Frank DeVol “Rather Have the Blues” sung by: Nat “King” Cole Edited by: Michael Luciano THE PLAYERS: Ralph Meeker as Mike Hammer Albert Dekker as Dr. Soberin Paul Stewart as Carl Evello Maxine Cooper as Velda Gaby Rogers as Gabrielle/Lily Carver Wesley Addy as Pat Juano Hernandez as Eddie Yeager Nick Dennis as Nick
Screenplay author A. I. Bezzerides: I put in the Christina Rossetti poem. And it was supposed to be drugs, dope. I changed it to Pandora’s Box. More dramatic.
Cloris Leachman as Christina
Thanks to poet, film curator and teacher Tova Gannana for her film essay and her L.A. Cruising, Radio On pre-film playlist; to Mark Klebeck and Top Pot Doughnuts for their old-fashioned, glazed doughnuts, David Lynch’s favorite choice; and to film series coordinator Kendal Gabel.
Jack Lambert as Sugar
Marian Carr as Friday
Jack Elam as Charlie Max