Thank you so much for your kind note. I was under the impression that so much has already been written about KISS ME DEADLY, especially the fine material that Alain Silver & James Ursini have included in their numerous books about film noir which seem to explore Aldrich’s masterpiece from every conceivable angle, including an appendix that reproduces the last scene of Bezzerdies’ shooting script describing the original ending of Mike and Velda escaping from the nuclear conflagration of the beach house into the sea that was missing from prints of the film for about twenty years, that I was originally planning on only writing a few short comments when Criterion’s amazing transfer and presentation of the film inspired me and sent me in a completely unexpected direction.

In any case, in response to your question on my thoughts about the history of the film’s two very different endings, it’s necessary for me to recall the first time I saw KISS ME DEADLY, which was in the late 60′s at the Liberty on 42nd Street on a double bill with Stanley Kubrick’s THE KILLING. Aldrich & Bezzzerdies’ original ending was there, at the end of the film, but for some reason, it struck me at the time as false, as if we as an audience were somehow supposed to forget that the nuclear device opened by Carver had exploded. From my perspective at the time, and I think many other fans of the film as well, attempting to rush into the sea from the already encroaching fog of nuclear fallout which would spell Mike and Velda’s doom seemed patently absurd, as if the filmmakers were trying to affix a phony happy ending onto the film.

In fact, the same year that I saw KISS ME DEADLY for the first time, Robert Aldrich, in an interview in Sight & Sound Magazine, talked about studio interference in terms of the ending as he wanted to include a much longer shot of Mike Hammer realizing exactly the disaster his bumbling had brought about, but UA had cut that shot, hoping that most people would think the conclusion a conventional happy ending. I think reading that interview with Aldrich’s complaints of studio interference made many of my fellow film buffs at the time feel that the entire sequence of Mike & Velda escaping into the sea was a compromise dictated by UA. However, in re-reading that interview today, Aldrich is very explicit that he wanted Mike to stay alive at the end of the film, so that he would finally attain consciousness and realize the consequences of his actions.

Nonetheless, in spite of Aldrich’s comments in that interview, there grew among film buffs in New York & LA in the early 70′s a conviction that the entire ending of KISS ME DEADLY was a false one dictated by studio hacks. In fact, some enterprising folks even began to cut out the last few minutes of the film in 16mm prints at screenings in cine clubs, thinking that they were somehow following Aldrich’s original intentions. Although this is pure speculation on my part, I think the practice of ending KISS ME DEADLY with the shot of the beach house exploding, which I myself viewed at private screenings in NY, must have led to the final scene being cut out of the official release print, which was only restored after Alain Silver & James Ursini discovered Bezzerdies’ script with the original ending in the late 90′s.

I agree with you that the ending is very strange, simultaneously comic, ironic and yet filled with dread, a kind of return to paradise while waiting for the apocalypse. However, if one keeps in mind Aldrich’s stated intention of a sudden realization of unintended consequences on Mike Hammer’s part, than the ending not only makes perfect sense, but becomes the last mosaic of a masterpiece that both completes and references the opening shot of the film, a process that is both perfectly symmetrical, and yet explodes all our preconceptions sustained within the past 106 minutes.

Thank you for allowing me this opportunity to expand upon my thoughts as expressed in the original article.

Yours Truly,

Mark Gross