Cloris Leachman movie reviews & film summaries
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Opening Shots: 'Kiss Me Deadly'
Jim Emerson | 2006-06-27
Enlarge image: Slapping flesh and heavy breathing.
From Kim Morgan, Sunset Gun:
When reading the request for greatest opening shots, the first film that popped into my head was immediate and almost too easy — “Kiss Me Deadly.��?
And then I reflected more.
There are so many masterful opening shots, some I find works of genius or some I simply love. But the more I thought about it, the more I drifted back to where my mind always manages to drift back to — stark, hard-boiled cruelty, paranoia, insanity and psycho sexual angst — so there it was again, “Kiss Me Deadly.��?
But for good reason. Robert Aldrich’s masterful noir hits you with a hysterical bang that sets its frenzied tone with such balls-out experimental élan; you can’t believe the film was released in 1955:
Before any credit sequence, the film begins with a pair of naked feet running down the middle of a highway in the black of the night.
