KISS ME DEADLY (1955)

I tuned into this movie because Ralph Meeker, one of my favorite actors of that era, plays Mike Hammer in this Mickey Spillane tale. He picks up an escapee from a nuthouse (Cloris Leachman in her screen debut) running on a highway, is nearly killed because of her, and pursues the case, unpaid. Plenty of the usual Hammer violence (tame by today's standards) along the way. This movie gets rave reviews as "an American Film Noir classic." I don't know why--Meeker and his gal Friday (Maxine Cooper) are good, but the plot creaks along, the dialog is awkward, and the bad guys' objective is never really clear, except that the "prize: is some radioactive material, toward what end is never made clear. The cast includes a complete set of extras that no fan of Fifties B-movies could possibly resist: Albert Dekker, Paul Stewart, Juano Hernandez, Wesley Addy, Strother Martin, Nick Dennis, Robert Cornthwaite, Jack (The Evil Eye) Elam, and Percy (Eternal Victim) Helton. I stuck with it only for the cast.