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Killer's Kiss | 
 enlarge | Director: Stanley Kubrick
Actors: Frank Silvera, Irene Kane, Jamie Smith, Jerry Jarrett, Mike Dana
Studio: MGM (Video & DVD)
Category: DVD
List Price: $14.98
Buy New: $5.72
You Save: $9.26 (62%)
New (33) Used (15) Collectible (1) from $4.96
Rating:  31 reviews
Sales Rank: 33588
Format: Black & White, Closed-captioned, Dolby, Full Screen
Languages: English (Original Language), English (Subtitled), French (Subtitled)
Rating: Unrated
Region: 1
Aspect Ratio: 1.33:1
DVD Layers: 1
DVD Sides: 1
Picture Format: Academy Ratio
Number Of Discs: 1
Running Time: 67 Minutes
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.3
Dimensions (in): 7.3 x 5.7 x 0.7
MPN: 907707
ISBN: 0792841387
UPC: 027616770721
EAN: 9780792841388
ASIN: 0792841387
Theatrical Release Date: October 1, 1955
Release Date: June 29, 1999
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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Description
Stanley Kubrick's second feature film, Killer's Kiss, made the world take notice. The young moviemaker won acclaim for this dazzling film noir about a struggling New York boxer (Jamie Smith) whose life is imperiled when he protects a nightclub dancer (Irene Kane) from her gangster boss (Frank Silvera). "Using his camera as a sandpaper block, Kubrick has stripped away the veneer from the prizefight and dancehall worlds," the New York Mirror proclaimed. Killer's Kissnot only lends considerable insight into future Kubrick classicssuch as The Killing and Full Metal Jacketbut it is also a remarkable film in its own right: the boxing match may bethe most vicious this side of Raging Bull, and the famed final battle remains an action tour-de-force. "An ambitious photographer...challenges the movie capital with Killer's Kiss," theNew York Daily News enthused. "The suspenseful venture augurs well for young Stanley Kubrick!"
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Stanley Kubrick wrote the story and produced, edited, shot, and directed his second feature like a one-man studio, and his developing cinematic intelligence turns an otherwise unremarkable story into a memorable if slight film, a hint at masterpieces to come. Jamie Smith is a washed up prizefighter who rushes to the rescue of his platinum blonde dime-a-dancer neighbor (Irene Kane) when she's attacked by her dapper hoodlum boss (Frank Silvera). Smith and Kane fall in love, but their plans to leave gritty New York for a simpler life in Seattle are jeopardized when jealous Silvera sends his thugs to lean on Smith. Mistaken identities and an overzealous beating lead to murder, kidnapping, and a desperate confrontation between Smith and Silvera in an eerie warehouse full of mannequins. Disembodied heads, swinging hands, and the blank stares of rows of lifeless dummies become a cold counterpoint to the sweaty, almost primal fight as Silvera wields an ax and Smith counters with a pike like gladiators in an abstract arena. The gray cityscape of New York (shot on location) turns into stark black and white and the city looms over the characters as the tension tightens. Kubrick's sophisticated use of sound and austere visual style creates a hyper-realistic atmosphere, which he would put to even better use in his follow-up film, the heist classic The Killing. --Sean Axmaker
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| Customer Reviews: Read 26 more reviews...
Gritty little noir. September 14, 2008
Jordan Krall (Noir Jersey, USA)
Brutal, raw, low budget noir by Stanley Kubrick. This was only his second feature and even though it's roughly edited, it shows just how much talent he had. At 67 minutes, it's pretty short (and there's a chase scene at the end that could've been trimmed by a minute or two) but it's an enjoyable but bleak look at what happens when a washed-up boxer gets involved with a girl and her shady, obsessive boss. There's no melodrama
here. It's pure gritty film-making on location in NYC. Excellent noir. (This would also make a good companion piece to Robert Wise's 1949 film The Set-Up which stars Robert Ryan as a boxer on his way out. And it has a bummer of an ending.)
Another reviewer said this was "ugly". I think that it was supposed to be. It wasn't supposed to be beautiful. It's a realistic, gritty, and dark look at NYC in the fifties. Compared to the high budget police procedural noirs from the same year, of course it's going to look ugly.
It's not going to be for all tastes but it's worth a look especially if you like bleak film noir.
 Kubrick's very worst September 1, 2007
Robert Buchanan (Wisconsin)
0 out of 2 found this review helpful
Kubrick's second feature film is a clumsy, ugly, nauseatingly dull crime drama in the vein of my grandmother's house during Thanksgiving. Highlights of this longest hour of my life include wooden performances, terrible editing and a story that literally has more exposition than actual plot. As most Kubrick enthusiasts know, "Fear and Desire" was pulled from circulation because Kubrick was so dissatisfied by it. I wish that he'd followed suit with this pile of bore. I'm amazed that the great filmmaker who created so many extraordinary, innovative motion pictures directed this at the start of his bizarre career.
This film is only notable for the penultimate scene, which features one of the single worst fight sequences that I've ever seen in a movie.
The theatrical tagline for this movie was: "Her Soft Mouth Was the Road to Sin-Smeared Violence!" Gross!
The first-class suspense film that foreshadowed conscious and technique..., January 4, 2007
Roberto Frangie (Leon, Gto. Mexico)
In 1955 a young man, who had produced a couple of 35mm. shorts and a feature which were so little known that they were never even shown in England, made a suspense thriller... From the fact that he co-produced it, wrote it, directed it and did the photography and editing himself you may deduce that he had more talent than backing... The movie was called "Killer's Kiss," and the multi-talented man who made it was the young Stanley Kubrick...
"Killer's Kiss" is a fascinating movie to look back as it is a notable thriller in its own right... It is a film about lonely people; alone people, which is not quite the same thing; their roots almost severed from a past which was once good and is now lost; solitary in the impartial big city at the end of the line...
It starts with a confident, quiet slowness that few directors would dare in the frenetic Seventies... It takes its time to develop, and for nearly half the film you can't guess what the plot is going to be... But this carefully measured film gives you a deep feeling for the characters and their context that leaves you, even after all the suspense, with an overwhelming feeling of the humanity of the movie...
The narrator, Davy Gordon (Jamie Smith) is a young and fading boxer, past it, but not defeated in his heart... The girl Gloria Price (Irene Kane), who lives in the same apartment block, has, like him, no family nor friends... She's come down to working as a dance partner in a shabby hall run by a baddie called Vincent Rapallo (Frank Silvera).
Kubrick slowly, and movingly, shows the two principals taking the downgrade: Davy fighting a losing bout in the ring while Gloria is trying to push off some heavy passes from Rapallo...
Even he, Rapallo, is made human, understandable... When he stands in his shadowed office, making up his mind to some malice, his eyes fall on cozy family photographs in nice domestic frames that he takes the trouble to keep there; and, when his mind is made up, he gestures irritably, guiltily, as if knowing he's letting them down and trying weakly to dismiss summarily aside their silent reproaches...
The whole story is condensed into three days... Yet it seems to have the natural, inevitable pace of real life; and the moments briefly taken out for little touches of New York street scenes add to the reality and place it in a context of truth...
Very little violence is actually shown except in Davy's boxing match which, in just a few minutes, gives a better feeling than most movies of what it's like to lose a fight in the ring... But, in spite of all, you're on the edge of your seat and you're glad to be there...
There is a classic chase over the rooftops, but even here there are human touches that kill cliché... These villains are not supermen, any more than Davy is: they can stumble on a fire escape, and not for laughs; one of them can fall as you or I would fall and drop out with a twisted ankle...
The suspense is not lessened by these touches: it is increased, because it is more real, seems less contrived...
"Killer's Kiss" was a first-class suspense film that foreshadowed conscious and technique that Kubrick was to take to the limit in later years... And, after all, the ending was fair enough for the Fifties... In the Seventies, Gloria would probably have got raped by the railway porter, and there'd have been a lot of unlovely detail and no suspense at all...
 Striking cult movie! December 24, 2006
Hiram Gomez Pardo (Valencia, Venezuela)
The Noir film in the fifties reached its absolute expansion and sheer maturity, dealing with all sort of tragic experiences, the loser gambler, the renegade kid, the abominable fear of the atomic treatment, the counterspies, the antihero raising, or the most intimate prototypes of the last page of the newspapers. Indeed, a whole generation accustomed to fabulous examples of the genre demanded major inventiveness and lurked in the intimacy of the dark projection halls. It would be said that any serious filmmaker should to make his incursion in the genre; from Orson Welles (Mr. Arkadin and Touch of evil), Hitchcock ( Strangers on a train), John Huston ( Asphalt jungle), or names we used to associate with other genres such as Anthony Mann, renowned directors such Robert Wise (The set up), Fritz Lang ( The big heat) Elia Kazan (Panic in the streets), Billy Wilder (Sunset boulevard), Edward Dymtrik (The street with no name and The sniper) threw their respective hats in the arena. But the emerging figure of a genius in progress as Stanley Kubrick who just opened his enormous wings, immediately captured the attention around him.
Killer's kiss was Stanley Kubrick's second feature film that, although its low budget, achieved a distinguished acknowledgement at the most unexpected levels, due among other details its ambitious display of visual unity, of harrowing sequences as Davy's manager murder in hands of the members of the Rapallo' s clan where the visual devices remind us to the Third man, the amazing chase throughout the roofs of the buildings, the ironical gaze around Manhattan's fantasies as well as suggestive elements that implies seduction, and violence.
Another remarkable factors to take into account are the handle of the inner tension of the characters, the employment of the time as metaphysical device, the existential uncertainness of our loser boxer, lonely and hopeless that is corresponded absolutely by his girlfriend Gloria, a dancer of a dark nightclub and the final sequence where the use of female mannequins are employed as defensive weapons in the hair raising fistfight.
The Genius of a Young Stanley Kubrick February 24, 2006
Suckerdwsp316 (Brooklyn, NY)
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
Killer's Kiss is a 1955 movie produced, directed and written by a 27 year old Stanley Kubrick. Coming off the heels of a poorly recieved first effort, 1953's Fear and Desire, Kubrick stormed back with an interesting little story set in the heart of New York City. The film's protagonist Davy Gordon, is a struggling local boxer who gets involved with a woman, Gloria Price who's ex, Vincent Rapallo hasn't let go of her yet. Kubrick slowly, and movingly, shows the two principals taking the downgrade: Davy fighting a losing bout in the ring while Gloria is trying to push off some heavy passes from Rapallo.
While the pair try to flee the city, Rapallo and his henchmen foil there escape. Price meanwhile, has changed her mind and decides she's better off with a real man, Rapallo. In the thrilling climax, Gordon and Rapallo battle it out in a run-down mannequin factory which foreshadows his technique shown in later masterpieces. In the end, Gordon finally takes Rapallo out, and runs off to catch his train. In an un-kubrick like way, as Gordon is about to step onto the train and off to Anywhere, USA, Gloria comes back, and re-joins him on there quest for happiness together.
"Killer's Kiss" was a first-class suspense film that foreshadowed conscious and technique that Kubrick was to take to the limit in later years. After all, the ending was fair enough for the Fifties. Out of a possible 5 stars, I give young Stanley Kubrick's "Killer's Kiss" 4 stars.
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