Fri 20 Mar 2009
My copy of Kiss Me Deadly (and every copy I’ve ever seen) clearly shows Hammer and Velda escaping into the surf and then the beach house being consumed in a mushroom cloud, so you can read it either way.
The scene doesn’t show anything but the beach house consumed by the explosion, nor a mushroom cloud as big as the Trinity or Hiroshima ones we have seen on film. It seems to show a small contained explosion that only blows up the beach house. If Aldrich intended Mike and Velda to be killed, I assume they wouldn’t be shown reaching the surf, unless he intended ambiguity.
Of course, if you want to get realistic they likely both got a lethal dose of radiation when the box was opened while they were in the house, much less when the house went up. But the film seems to show the explosion only consuming the beach house, and Mike and Velda are shown before that in the surf, not the house.
I still think the death of Mike and Velda is like the ending of 2001: A Space Odyssey where viewers wrote their own ending. The only thing supporting the death of Hammer and Velda is that Aldrich and screenwriter A.I. Bezzerides really disliked Spillane and loathed Hammer.
I have heard there is supposedly a cut where Mike and Velda do not reach the surf (and even that the scene where they do was imposed by the studio), but then again that may be fans reading their own interpretation into the film or even a bad copy edited poorly for showing on television. Again, if the intent of the film is Mike and Velda die, why show them reach the supposed safety of the surf?
I’m reminded of taking my cousin’s five year old son to see Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. At the end when Newman and Redford are surrounded by the army and decide to go out in a blaze of glory they run outside firing their weapons wildly, the frame freezes on that image. With perfect five year old logic my cousin’s son turned to me and asked: “Did they kill all those guys?”
The mind is a terrible waste — or whatever Dan Quayle said. Or maybe this is one of those glass half empty, half full things. At least Aldrich doesn’t have Mike and Velda climbing in a lead lined refrigerator like Harrison Ford in Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull.
Or like the argument between Sam Jackson and Keven Spacey in The Negotiator — is Alan Ladd dead or alive in the last scene of Shane? In the case of Kiss Me Deadly and Shane, I think the pessimists are writing their own movie, but you never know, maybe my cousin’s five year old was right and Butch and Sundance wiped out the entire Bolivian army.
March 23rd, 2009 at 7:41 am
I found the link to the Noir of the Week discussion of KISS ME DEADLY:
http://www.noiroftheweek.com/2007/07/restoration-of-kiss-me-deadly-1955.html
Or:
http://tinyurl.com/czxqzs
March 27th, 2009 at 11:32 am
Thanks, Juri. I’ve been off my computer for most of the week, so this is the first time I’ve read what Steve-O had to say about the movie. Apparently the ending was butchered at the time of its release to placate one man who could have prevented the film from being shown in several southern states.
But that’s a brief summary of a long post on Noir of the Week, which everyone should go read for themselves.
— Steve
March 28th, 2009 at 8:26 am
Nice to finally get this one settled. Now if the spirits of Clarke and Kubrick can only move those unregenerate sixties filmgoers who still argue the Star Child blows up the planet at the end of 2001, and the fans who insist Ray Milland screams “I can still see” under the end titles of X The Man With X Ray Eyes.
It’s a bit like those who argue the last line of the Huston version of The Maltese Falcon is Boagart’s “… the stuff that dreams are made of,” when it is actually Ward Bond’s reply, “Huh?” Which might also have been Hammett’s reaction when Spade suddenly turned poetic.