A lonely highway at night, a female hitchhiker in a trench coat who has escaped from a mental hospital, and a private detective who picks her up without realizing what he’s getting himself into: Robert Aldrich’s KISS ME DEADLY sends Mike Hammer, Mickey Spillane’s hard-boiled detective, on a chase through the Los Angeles underworld, where gangsters, secret services, and a mysterious force collide—the full extent of which is only revealed at the end.

In 1955, in the midst of the Cold War, Aldrich directed one of the most radical films of classic noir—fast-paced, paranoid, and depicting violence and social fragmentation in a way Hollywood had scarcely shown before—and it became one of the most influential genre films of all time, whose influence can be traced from the Nouvelle Vague to Tarantino. But its true protagonist is Los Angeles itself: endless streets, desolate hills, nighttime drives through a city that is not merely a backdrop but becomes a labyrinth that draws Hammer deeper and deeper into its depths.