KILLER'S KISS (1955)

Davey Gordon is pacing around Penn Station; as he narrates his story in flashback, we cut to him pacing in his small apartment. Still a young man, he is considered old by the standards of his profession, boxing, his career having been "one long promise without fulfillment." His uncle in Seattle has offered to let him stay with him for a while, and he's considering it. Across the courtyard, he can see into the window of Gloria, a worker at the Pleasure Land dance hall. Though the two see each other frequently, they don't know each other. That evening, he has what may be his last bout, with an up-and-comer named Kid Rodriguez. As Davey gets pummeled in the ring, Gloria is pawed at by her boss Vinnie, a slimy small-time gangster as they watch the match on television (with Vinnie getting rather excited by the violence). Later in the night, Davey hears her screams as Vinnie assaults her, and he races across the rooftops to her room which scares Vinnie away. The two share their backgrounds, and we find out that Gloria had a sister who was a ballet dancer who killed herself just after Gloria accused her of not loving their recently deceased father. They spend the next day together in the city, and, declaring love, they decide to leave for Seattle together. Unfortunately, that may not be easy for Gloria; when she goes to Vinnie to quit and collect her last paycheck, he becomes jealous and sets in motion a plan to squelch their happiness.

Stanley Kubrick's second film, this is a fairly stark black & white semi-noir thriller, shot mostly on location in a fairly plain straightforward style with some nice stylistic touches here and there that nevertheless don't draw a lot of attention to themselves—the opening shots of Davey pacing in two different places, a very cool climactic fight scene in a warehouse filled with mannequins. The B-movie feel extends to the acting, which is not meant as a criticism; it feels naturalistic but a bit under rehearsed. I quite liked both leads: Jamie Smith (pictured with mannequin hands) as Davey, and Irene Kane as Gloria (Kane gave up acting and became Chris Chase, a successful journalist who has a cameo as a film critic in ALL THAT JAZZ). They are a bit unpolished but they feel real. Frank Silvera, the only member of the cast to sustain a substantial acting career, is nicely menacing as Vinnie. Virtually all the dialogue was obviously post-dubbed which hurts the atmosphere. It may not be indicative of where Kubrick was headed, but it's certainly watchable (and short, definitely not where Kubrick was headed). [DVD]