Robert Aldrich melts down the 'B' detective thriller into a vision of Armageddon: in 1955, Kiss Me Deadly was years ahead of its time in being so very audaciously about its time. From the opening sequence--a desperate ride through nowhere shot in glistening blacks and not much white--Aldrich and cinematographer Ernest Laszlo create a world that is not quite recognizable, yet frighteningly familiar. It is Los Angeles. The tackiness here is almost palpable, abetted by the sincerely deadpan acting of Ralph Meeker as Mickey Spillane's Mike Hammer, a nihilistic anti-hero whose mediocrity is well met by the company he keeps, shapely stick-figures with bad thoughts. (One person actually feels something but she, thank god, has been institutionalized.) The plot is played out in paranoid glances and unanswered questions; at once naive and amazingly cynical, it involves a search, not for jewels or statuettes or even drugs, but for a lead-lined box containing a small atomic bomb. Mere greed is a thing of the past. Welcome to Alphaville.