Kiss Me Deadly

Saturday, May 23: Followed by Q&A with film essayist, collector, and curator Bob Rubin. After the screening, we will debut our new third-floor exhibition Trapped in the Shadows: The Worlds of Film Noir, featuring artwork, rare posters, photographs, scripts and books.

Kiss Me Deadly, noir at its most ferocious, takes the genre’s familiar cynical detective and drops him into a nightmare of Cold War paranoia and violence. What begins as a routine pickup on a dark highway quickly spirals into something far more sinister, and far less explainable. Directed by Robert Aldrich (The Dirty Dozen, Whatever Happened to Baby Jane?), the film is notorious for its relentless brutality, sexual tension, and a finale so shocking it still feels dangerous today. 

One evening, private detective Mike Hammer (Ralph Meeker) picks up a strange woman, Christina (Cloris Leachman), who’s standing on the highway wearing only a trench coat. They’re stopped farther on by strangers who knock out Mike and murder Christina. Although warned not to investigate by the police, Mike and his girlfriend and assistant, Velda (Maxine Cooper), become ensnared in a dark plot involving scientist Dr. Soberin (Albert Dekker) and Christina’s terrified roommate, Lily (Gaby Rodgers).