Killer’s Kiss

Stars: Frank Silvera, Irene Kane, Jamie Smith

Director: Stanley Kubrick

Fast Facts:

• Kubrick was inspired to make the film by the pulp crime novels of Mickey Spillane and Jim Thompson.

• The film cost about $40,000, with much of the funding provided by Kubrick's uncle, a New York drugstore owner.

• Star Irene Kane later became an author and journalist under the name Chris Chase.

• Most of the locations in the film were within a few minutes’ walk of Kubrick’s apartment.

• Many of the opening moments in the film, leading up to Davy’s boxing match, were copied from Kubrick’s first film, the documentary The Day of the Fight.

• Kubrick’s wife at the time, Ruth Sobotka, acted as art director and set designer, and doubled for Irene Kane in her solo dance sequence.

Stanley Kubrick’s second feature film, Killer’s Kiss, made the world take notice. The young moviemaker won acclaim for this dazzling film noir about a struggling New York boxer (Jamie Smith) whose life is imperiled when he protects a nightclub dancer (Irene Kane) from her gangster boss (Frank Silvera). "Using his camera as a sandpaper block, Kubrick has stripped away the veneer from the prizefight and dancehall worlds," the New York Mirror proclaimed.

Killer’s Kiss not only lends considerable insight into future Kubrick classics — such as The Killing and Full Metal Jacket — but is also a remarkable film in its own right: the boxing match may be the most vicious this side of Raging Bull, and the famed final battle remains an action tour-de-force. "An ambitious photographer… challenges the movie capital with Killer’s Kiss," the New York Daily News enthused. "The suspenseful venture augurs well for young Stanley Kubrick."

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