Mickey Spillane's greatest concoction, gumshoe Mike Hammer (played with smirking indifference by Ralph Meeker) is an Atom Age crusader, amoral, casually cruel, and nihilistically numb, except when driving his souped-up Jag or grubbing for gams. “You don't taste like anybody I know,” says one dame upon locking lips. Set in a strictly sinister 'scape of urban L.A., the story builds as an accumulation of paranoid glimpses that fuse into a critical mass of unanswered questions. On a country drive, Hammer picks up a panicked hitchhiker (Cloris Leachman) whose hysteria is punctuated by the plaintive request, “Remember me.” Her ominous memory leads him to a small glow-in-the-dark box, sought as well by thugs led by a cynical contraband merchant (Albert Dekker). Aldrich's cooler than Cold War style, simultaneously hip, angular, and distant, seems a precise measure of the anxiety-riddled times, whether it be fear of foe or fission. Hard-edged and savage, Kiss Me Deadly lifts the lid on fifties apocalypse.