Directed by Stanley
Kubrick
Starring Jamie Smith,
Irene Kane and Frank Silvera.
(1955, Black and White)
This nifty little 67-minute long film noir set in an unnamed
East Coast city is one of Kubrick's earliest films, reportedly shot with a borrowed
camera while the director was on public assistance.
Unlike most flicks of the
type, it features a (spoiler alert) more-or-less happy ending, but don't let
that stop you from checking it out: it has an underlying bleakness as bitter as
a two-timer's lies and the framing of many scenes suggests what Kubrick would
achieve as a filmmaker later in his career.
In the film, Davy Gordon (Smith) is a boxer and used to be agood one before time and other fighters got the better of him. Hoping for a big
payday and a comeback of sorts, he takes on Rodriguez, a younger, faster
welterweight, and ends up down for the count.
After talking with relatives back in the Pacific Northwest, Davy decides to pack it in and return home. What complicates matters is the fact
that he has met a girl, Gloria Price (Kane), who works in a dime a dance joint
owned by petty gangster Vince Rapallo (Silvera). When Rapallo, who is crazy
about Gloria, forces himself on her, Davy comes to her rescue.
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On his way to the deck, Davy takes one of many punches thrown by his rival, Rodriguez. |
This simple
action brings the boxer and the dance hall girl together -- and puts Rapallo in the mood for vengeance.
From our vantage point in an era in which explicit sex has
become the rule, it seems hard to believe how quickly can suggest a romance in
a film that would be rated GP these days only because of the violence in the
last half. Kubrick does it here with nothing more than a kiss. After the smack
in question, Davy says, "Something's happened."
Gloria responds, "Yes, I know . . .You kissed me."
Gloria (Irene Kane) is the love interest
that sparks the action in Killer's Kiss. |
"Is that all?" he asks, bewildered, to which Gloria
responds "That's all I saw, and I was watching all the time."
As the pair pack to leave town, Rapallo decides to take
Gloria back from her new boyfriend. His goons kill a friend of Davy's by
mistake, however, and they kidnap the girl and rendezvous with Rapallo, setting
up the final confrontation.
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Davy forces Rapallo to take him to Gloria. |
Though Kubrick made Killer's Kiss on a budget
so small you could easily miss it with a microscope, with a cast of unknowns so obscure
their pictures belong on milk cartons, he delivers an amazingly satisfying
film.
Silvera, who was in the cast of Viva Zapata, The
St. Valentine's Day Massacre and The Greatest Story Ever Told, but
who did most of his work as heavies on series television, is one of the
greasiest villains I have ever seen in a movie. He seems to sweat through every
scene he is in, leaving a glistening trail behind him like a 160-pound slug.
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Oleaginous villain Vince Rapallo (Frank Silvera) casts a greasy pall over the film. |
Like Silvera, Smith mostly did TV parts, but his low-key
performance as the hero of this short thriller adds immensely to the film's
gritty verisimilitude.
And Kane, who had only the briefest of acting careers (she
is better known as a journalist under the byline Chris Chase), is a treat as a
woman who has burned by so many men she's been forced to invest in asbestos
lingerie. She is no conventional beauty,
is convincing as the kind of arms-length woman who could drive a small-time
mobster wild with desire and earn his enmity with an ill-timed insult.
Don't look for high-speed auto stunts or manic shootouts in Killer's
Kiss: you won't see them. The action is confined to a rooftop foot
chase between Rapallo and Gordon, one ring-boxing sequence and a violent
struggle between the hero and villain in one of the creepiest settings in all moviedom -- a manikin
factory.
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"That's all I saw, and I was watching all the time," Gloria tells Davy after they kiss. |
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