Film Noir post

"Kiss Me Deadly" is one of the most messed up movies I have ever seen. It involves a very dark protagonist, who gets entangled in the middle of a nuclear holocaust. This movie is pretty much as dark as they get - all the main characters are very selfishly driven, and it features the end of the world.
The protagonist is Mike Hammer, a private eye who works on divorce cases by providing evidence of a spouse's infidelity, mostly sleeping with the wife or having his assistant sleep with the husband. Clearly this line of work is itself very disreputable, and combined with his manipulation of his assistant by taking advantage of the fact that she has feelings for him, it is clearly established that Mike is even darker than your average Noir protagonist. Even when it seems like Mike is trying to redeem himself by investigating further into the death of Christina, we learn that he is doing it almost entirely in the hopes that there will be "something big".
Even the femme fatal is not your conventional type. In this movie, she seems far more deadly, especially since the audience has no idea of the extent of her evil until the last few scenes. The shift in characterization is so dramatic and extreme, which seems to amplify Velda's evil nature. I found it very disturbing how she could be mask her true self behind such an innocent and helpless facade.
And finally, the ending is the darkest part of the movie. Velda opens a box of radioactive material, which triggers a nuclear holocaust. It seems to be in response to the tensions of the cold war, as well as a reminder of what happened in the second world war. This very surreal and over the top ending makes "kiss me deadly" stand out among Film Noir titles, because the resulting effect has far worse implications.