Killer’s Kiss ***½ (1955, Frank Silvera, Irene Kane, Jamie Smith) – Classic Movie Review 360

Stanley Kubrick’s short second feature film from 1955 is only 67 minutes long, but Killer’s Kiss provides plenty of evidence of the budding director’s talent. A punchy, stylish, inventively made, film noir action thriller, it is told a long flashback as the hero waits at a train station for his girl, recalling events.

Kubrick’s seductive pulp script focuses on a private dancer Gloria Price (Irene Kane), who is being attacked by her employer and lover Vincent Rapallo (Frank Silvera), a brutish dance-hall owner infatuated with her. Young prize-fighter Davey Gordon (Jamie Smith) intervenes and then he gets together with Gloria.

Naturally, this infuriates Rapallo, who sends his boys to kill Davey, but they kill his friend by mistake. Gloria is then abducted by Rapallo and the boys but she is rescued by Davey.

Startlingly photographed by Kubrick himself, it is a rough, raw, still fresh-seeming movie thanks to the particularly suspenseful, disturbing, violent story that is moved on at a great pace by Kubrick. He does full justice to the plot revelations, character development and the doomy atmosphere and tragic mood, while filming in eye-catching shadowy film noir-style on grungy New York City locations.

Killer’s Kiss was made for only $40,000 by the then 27-year-old director, whose second wife Ruth Sobotka appears as Iris, the ballet dancer. She died at 41 in 1967. Kane was her sister, Kubrick’s sister-in-law. She became a writer and journalist in New York.

‘No one had ever made a feature film in such amateur circumstances and then obtained worldwide release for it,’ Kubrick boasted.

© Derek Winnert 2013 Classic Movie Review 360

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