Thursday, January 28, 2010

Murder, My Sweet


Kiss Me, Deadly (Again)

“The movie is described as
"the definitive, apocalyptic,
nihilistic, science-fiction film noir
of all time—at the close of
the classic noir period."

http://www.filmsite.org/kiss.html

Kiss Me, Deadly—the definitive, apocalyptic, nihilistic, sci-fi noir of all time…

But whose time? My time? Your time?

They say I was—just an American gangster.

Nothing but a two-bit, hard-nosed, neo-noir, futuristic anti-hero creep.

Ending up on a shithole like Titan—morphed from a long-gone LA.

Some pulp fiction sci-fi novel—written by Mickey Spillane.

They say I was just some kind of scuzzy private dick—skulking around dark alleys—looking for trouble.

Slinking around—in the crummy footsteps of some other old pulp fiction dicks.

Seedy no-good Mickey Spillane—that fascist prick.

Faggy closet-case Raymond Chandler. You know the type—guyz like Phillip Marlowe.

Or Mike Hammer—just looking for an excuse to bitch-slap or fuck-over anybody who got in my way.

Except for droid chicks that is—my one and only fatal weakness.
You’ve seen all those Aldrich remakes—those so-so routine sci-fi noir flicks and fantasy fiascos.

Like Planet for Ransom (2052) and Trouble on Triton (2053). That macabre psychological horror-thriller—Whatever Happened to Flash Gordon (2054).

Yeah, we get all those crummy Netflix losers—out here on Titan.

What else is there to do—2-weeks on & 2-weeks off. Up here doing the Rings of Saturn. It pays good—offshore out here on the rigs.

I never thought I’d get sick of diamonds—puky about gold. But now it’s just SSDD—same shit different day. Go ahead and laugh at me—I don’t care. It’s a crummy job—but somebody’s got to do. Running the robot rigs—mining the Rings of Saturn.

Back home in Titan City—what a hole. I end up singing the Blues. “Ain’t got no food on my table—ain’t got no shoes on my feet.” All I do is sit around—listening to John Lee Hooker. No Food on my Table. No Shoes, baby. No Shoes.

Hard times—Hard Times on Titan.

Know what I mean? If I don’t find an android chick pretty soon—I think I’m gonna go crazy. Android chicks are cool. They do in the road. They do it in the car. They do it in the house. Nobody watchin’ us—nobody needs to know.

Android chicks are easy. They can go both ways. Some are foxy chicks. Others rude boy toys. They go all the way, baby. They know how to mind-fuck me real good. Hard times, baby—sometimes it seems like everyday’s hard. Hard times, man—hard times…

Most of the time I sit around—playing with myself. No shoes on my feet. No food on my table. No fast food, baby. I want it slow and easy—like that android chick last night.

Her name was Christina Bailey. She was hitchhiking down on Saturn Boulevard—I almost ran over her in a back alley. She didn’t have any shoes on her feet. Just wearing a lousy trench coat—no food on my table. I picked her up—she made me cry for mercy.

Sometimes hard times—they’re the only times. The only times that make sense—out here on Titan where nothing makes much sense. Yeah, baby—it’s hard times out here by the Rings. You know what I mean? It gets pretty hard—way out here in the sticks.

I watch lots of movies in bed. Like that German cinematographer Lazlo—those Netflix CGI remakes are pretty good. In between smoking a good Martian Red ju-ju—and making love to some android chick. Last night we watched one of those earlier sci-fi film retro-noir flicks—D.O.A. Deadline for Earth (2050).

“Hold on, baby” I told her, “I’m comin’…”

It was pretty good—you know like one of those old Aldrich raunchy-thrillers like Kiss Me, Deadly (1955). Those old Earthside Lazlo flicks—with their forgotten German expressionistic lighting and shadow tricks. Those weird CGI guyz dragged it out from one of the vidscreen vaults back Earthside—and redid it just right. You should see what they did with all those Fritz Lang sci-fi pulp fiction classics—like Woman in the Moon (1929) and Metropolis (1927)…

Like the Martian Movie Review says: “Kiss Me Deadly Again (2055)—an independent film featuring a cheap and sleazy, contemptible, fascistic private eye investigator/vigilante named Mike Hammer—whose crummy Earthside trademarks are brutish violence and the usual end-justifies-the-means sexual perversions.”

“Okay, baby—take it.”

Those CGI special effects were really hot.

I really get off—on those retro-noir sci-fi flicks. Those neat remakes with those really great Mickey Spillane-type ruthless private dick scenes. They’re really right up my alley—Mike Hammer’s vain and selfish, mean and narcissistic just like me.

Most android chicks get sick of me pretty fast. I don’t know why. I always give them a good time. I pay them plenty. We watch lots of movies—you know what I mean? That skanky water-bed of mine—it’s got lots of down-and-dirty mileage dontchaknow?

Anyway, there’s this scene in Kiss Me, Deadly. You know—like when everybody’s after this stupid thing in a box. It’s not just a solitary pursuit—I mean everybody and their grandmother wants it. What’s ever in it. The Corporation, the Syndicate—the usual powerful TPTB.

Like what’s inside it? Fuck if I know. Bezzerides dreamed up the whole story—it didn’t have much of anything to do with Spillane’s raunchy novel. There’s this white-hot apocalyptic Thing—inside a mysterious ‘Pandora's box' ("the great whatzit"). And these really weird screamy voices—coming out of it. And some bad-ass bright lights special effects. Kind of like whatever was in the truck—of that other sci-fi noir classic, Repo-Man.

All those flicks outta the fucking paranoid ‘50s—they were worried about things back then seem that weren’t so stupid. After the Great Apocalypse War—everything those paranoid flicks said pretty much seemed to become true. Since then there’s been all sorts of nasty planetary catastrophes and spaceship annihilations—that’s how we ended up with a colony way out here on Titan. Getting away from all that apocalyptic shit—talk about Earth ending up Planet of the Living Dead.

That reminds me—there’s this forgotten abandoned Titan villa just outside of town. It’s like the perfect place to get down with my chick. But there’s something weird about the place. Like there’s some kind of time-warp going on. It’s like making love in a cemetery—you know what I mean. Banging your head on a tombstone—or getting off in a columbarium full of cinerary urns…

Kiss Me, Deadly Again (2055) kinda was a puzzling flick for me—even better than the original Kiss Me, Deadly (1955). I even paid $10,000—to get my hands on one of the few pulp fiction paperback Spillane originals. Published in 1952—each page now just a delicate crumbling ocher-red fading exquisite remembrance of the way things were back then. To think that Spillane got published—with millions of copies back then. Phasing out of comix into pulp fiction—making lots of dough.
.
They don’t make books like that anymore—no more trees or forests Earthside for paperbacks or any kind of books anymore. No more cardboard boxes, houses, whatever. The great Weyerhaeuser Corporation gone—no more “creating sustainable solutions to the world's challenges through the development of innovative forest products that are essential to everyday blah blah blah…”
.
They’ve got everything on vidscreen now—thanks to the Netflix Corporation. It took over everything—Amazon, Google, Kindle, Apple, Microsoft, the whole kit and caboodle. Rare book rooms in the universities—they still carry a few token volumes of Chandler and Spillane I guess. But things will never be the way they used to be—the Guttenberg Revolution is pretty much forgotten now.

Only out of boredom—did I teach myself how to read Earthscript. It’s kind of tricky—it takes lots of time. But when you’re out here working on the Rings—there’s nothing else to do. Except android chicks, of course. So I’ve got my rare book collection—limited to a dozen priceless Ace sci-fi pulp fiction paperbacks. They’re—worth a couple of thousand bucks now. Plus a priceless Mickey Spillane novel or two—worth $1,000,000.

If only Hammer knew—how valuable his cheap pulp fiction thrillers would become in the sci-fi noir future. It’s like if I only knew—what I was getting into that night when I picked up that cute droid chick in the alley? Behind the Titan San Bernardino Towers.

Talk about sci-fi noir déjà vu. A scene right out of Kiss Me, Deadly. How could my so-so boring world change so much—after I got involved with her? Who would have ever guessed—I’d end up living a pulp fiction novel? Once that post-apocalyptic nihilistic melodrama—really got going?

It was a reckless movie—and a reckless book. A censored version of both came out later on—but then they were banned. The Corporate League of Decency protested a lot—resulting in all the books and vidscreen versions being atomized into the void.

I was lucky to get my hands on some bootleg paperback versions—and a two-bit scratchy DVD or two. Kiss Me, Deadly—both flick and pulp paperback. Both seemingly rather innocently campy and cataclysmically ridiculous—especially probably for most movie audiences back now in 2055.

Producer/director Aldrich's brutal, fast action, paranoid film back then—with its skuzzy series of disconnected scenes. Based on the sci-fi noir imagination—of comic-book writer Mickey Spillane. With his ‘50s sensationalist detective doppelganger Mike Hammer—sleazing his way through a best-seller series of eleven Hammer books.

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