Kiss Me Deadly: 70 Years On
Celebrating Robert Aldrich’s notorious film noir
Warning: Contains spoilers
Quentin Tarantino paid deft homage to Robert Aldrich’s 1955 film noir Kiss Me Deadly with the mysterious suitcase containing unseen glowing contents in Pulp Fiction (1994). Theories abound as to what lies inside (the soul of Ving Rhames’s Marcellus Wallace is a popular notion), as they do with the Pandora’s Box-style McGuffin at the centre of Robert Aldrich’s mystery. The apocalyptic ending, in which said box is opened, was also paid tribute to by Steven Spielberg and George Lucas, in the face-melting finale of Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981). Old Testament-style wrath is depicted literally in the case of Raiders, but Kiss Me Deadly is a bit more enigmatic.
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