Solo pour une blonde

While never in the class of 'Kiss Me, Deadly', or even the original version of 'I, The Jury', 'The Girl Hunters' is an enjoyable detective movie featuring a surprisingly convincing portrayal of Mike Hammer by his creator Mickey Spillane. The film is well shot, mostly well acted and has a storyline that keeps you interested till the end. What lets it down is the intrusive and repetitive music and endless shots of Spillane/Hammer walking in and out of buildings/offices while putting on or taking off his trench coat. After a while both these elements become irritating, but not irritating enough to make you want to stop watching. Spillane is a suitably rough around the edges Hammer and is well supported by Lloyd Nolan as a helpful FBI agent and by the gorgeous Shirley Eaton as the only female character in the picture, the widow of a murdered senator. My personal favourite Mike Hammer film is the first version of 'I, The Jury' with Biff Elliott as Hammer. That film is pure noir and Elliott is excellent in the role. 'The Girl Hunters' tries hard and almost gets there, but noir was past it's sell by date and the old masters of the genre were mostly gone. This film gives a good facsimile and is very watchable, but do not expect 'The Big Sleep'.

Yeah, pals, I'll bet this is a dream of many writers, to portray his or her favorite character on the screen. I imagine Agatha Christy would have loved to portray Miss Marple, and Dashell Hammett possibly would have picked The Continental Op to portray.

That off my chest, I feel kindly toward this film and was glad for the opportunity to see Spillane as Hammer. I can't say he was terribly good, but one can at least say that his portrayal was interesting, and I don't mean that as a put-down.

It was also good as always to see Lloyd Nolan still around and adding to the film. This sure isn't the best Mike Hammer film, but I found it worth a look and imagine you will too.

"The Girl Hunters" opened in San Francisco the same week in 1963 as "Dr. No". Mickey Spillane's film got all the major publicity. However, the first outing of Sean Connery as James Bond altered action film history. Thereafter Pabst Blue Ribbon-drinking proles got muscled aside for dinner-jacketed U-speakers who knew that red wine didn't go with fish.

I saw "The Girl Hunters" three times that summer. I admit that I love it dearly. I have whistled the propulsive soundtrack themes for 45 years, conjuring up the film's attitude as I set my shoulders determinedly and prowl the urban landscape with a warily appraising squint.

I read the book twice that year. The second time I imagined Spillane's own curbstone-edged voice doing the first-person narration. It fit. My God, it fit. As an actor he didn't have the line-reading skills of a pro, but he had authenticity and a distinctive charm.

Robert Aldrich's Spillane adaptation "Kiss Me Deadly" (1955) has stature as a late-noir post-modernist metafictional commentary on the detective genre. Prophetically, Aldrich filmed it before most of those adjectives had meaning. However, only "The Girl Hunters" accurately conveys the feel of Mickey Spillane's fiction.

Aldrich and actor Ralph Meeker present a private eye opportunist seen from the outside--brutal, energetic, eyes on the main chance, cunning rather than bright. He's too large for his suit, a hustler busting out of his own clothes and the place he has in the world. A sly comment on slick, 1950's grassroots capitalist greed.

"The Girl Hunters" and star Spillane give you Mike Hammer the way he sees himself--reasonable, but dedicated; taking care of business the way he needs to in an uneasy environment. A solid citizen, good to friends, but "someone terrible", a civic benefactor with a .45 under his coat and the will to use it.

The only major difference I recall between book and screenplay comes when Hammer enters the tough waterfront bar where he's not welcome. The novel has a routine fight at the door. The movie shows Mike out-menace the ice pick- wielding bouncer while displaying his trademark homicidal grin, "the one with all the teeth."

Interestingly, Lloyd Nolan, the white-haired Fed in the film, portrayed Brett Halliday's detective Mike Shayne in seven movies for 20th Century-Fox in the 1940's. You might check out the DVD package. Its features discuss Halliday's books, solid mass market hardboiled mysteries.

Spillane took this type of urban adventurer and invigorated him with the Old Testament rigidity of Stonewall Jackson, Jack Dempsey's love of hands-on violence, and the populist wrath of a John Brown. His far more gutsy, hugely selling novels wove working class attitudes into fiercely climaxing revenge fantasies. The on-screen fight in "The Girl Hunters" between Hammer and the Dragon had no equal for pitiless savagery in 1963.

In 1923 Carroll John Daly put the first hardboiled wise-cracking private detective into pulp magazine print. He represents a different stream from Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler. Daly's action tales have roots in rough-and-ready American culture. The big-talking river raftsmen in HUCKLEBERRY FINN and the folk yarns of Paul Bunyan and Pecos Bill display the same out-sized swagger as Daly's private eye Race Williams.

Williams admitted that he could walk into a room filled with clues and not find a single one. His style of detecting was to fling open the door and start shooting, then sort things out as they flew. Spillane read and admired Daly, writing him a revealing fan letter after achieving success.

Spillane gave the Race Williams bumptious folk hero contemporary visceral impact. He described his work as "the chewing gum of American literature". However, his books do more than exercise eye muscles.

America's classic paranoid rant remains the same for rich and poor, Left and Right: Somewhere, somehow, someone is doing me dirt and I won't stand for it any longer! From 1947 to 1952 Mike Hammer shot men and women, kicked the guilty as well as the innocent, and broke teeth other than his own exorcising that rage. He came back after a decade in THE GIRL HUNTERS novel, which focuses our smoldering abstract anger on a world-girdling spy ring at the service of the international Communist conspiracy.

Thank God it can be thrown into disarray by a lone American woman loose in the Soviet Union. (To learn what happens to Velda, the invisible Maguffin, read the book's direct sequel THE SNAKE.) Thank Him again that we have a howitzer-packing rogue private eye who can shrug off seven years of drunken debilitation (and repeated merciless beatings from a former best friend) to get ugly with foreign assassins nestled in our midst.

Philosopher Ayn Rand named Spillane in her Objectivist newsletter as her favorite author. Why? His stories did not deal in moral grey areas. Bad was black, good was white. She liked that. Yet the truth of Spillane's fiction has more twists.

Mike Hammer himself knows that he's a kill-crazy psycho. If you read nothing else of Mickey Spillane's, you might take time for the first chapter of ONE LONELY NIGHT. Hammer spends the rest of that book brooding over why a woman he has just saved from a gunman jumps to her death in an icy river after taking one searching look at the expression on his face.

He comes to the soul-soothing epiphany that he's a killer designed by nature to kill killers. That's his destiny. He's a walking American revenge machine, a wish-fulfillment figure from the unquiet depths of our national psyche.

"The Girl Hunters" presents this raw-hewn character straight, without any intermediary meddling. However you may like the approaches taken by Ralph Meeker or Armando Assante or Stacey Keach, the movie's credits have it right--Mickey Spillane is Mike Hammer. The Hammer on the page is a foot taller than Spillane on screen; otherwise they're identical.

This film starring Mickey Spillane as his hero creation, Mike Hammer, does indeed have its moments. The problem is, if we splice those moments together and remove the rest, the film runs, at best, 20-22 minutes; maybe 25 if you add the opening credits. As such, this would made a great 30 minute 1950's television episode.

Spillane does a credible job of personifying his character, Mike Hammer. The key reason being, Hammer was crafted as a reflection of Spillane. Therefore, Spillane had only to play himself which, after a lifetime of practice, was not difficult.

Then we have to ask, what's wrong with this film? And the answer is, everything that comes between its 25 minutes of glory, as mentioned earlier. In essence, there simply is no film to speak of.

The truth of the matter is that, Spillane, should have been content with the chance to portray his character on screen for the first time -as he thought "Mike Hammer" should be portrayed - period. After all, for years he'd complained that he didn't like the previous screen portrayals (with particular venom reserved for Biff Elliot's performance in "I the Jury" in the mid 50's). But being a writer himself, he wasn't content, and interfered with the film's experienced screen writing staff. The net result was not good.

Spillane tried to paint in a specific background for the film, that included real bits of his life. The end product was right for a book, but not for a screenplay of a, supposed, action drama.

For instance, he insisted on including his close confidant and friend columnist Hy Gardner. Gardner's scene is long and boring, because Gardner himself is boring. If he wanted Gardner included, he should have allowed an experienced character actor to portray him, vigorously, via a good script.

One of Spillane's favorite bistros was one of New York's best German restaurants, located on 44th Street in Manhattan. The film spends a lot of dead time showing him walking to that location, and having protracted conversations with the other character actors in the darkened restaurant. The conversations are long and, for the most part, pointless. I'm certain however, for the publicity, the management was quite happy.

This film serves two purposes:(1) it does indeed show how the character of Mike Hammer should be portrayed to be true to the Spillane books.

(2) It shows how not to make a - almost "Film Noir" - detective film.

My suggestion, see Ralph Meeker as Mike Hammer in "Kiss Me Deadly". Now that's a detective film and that's "Film Noir".

Granted, the other posters have valid comments.......Spillane cannot really act. However, for some bizarre reason, his stilted, monotone delivery works for me.

My major complaint, regarding acting, would have to concern Scott Peters, as Hammer's former partner. He screeches his way through every scene he's in, and he makes it completely unbelievable that his character could ever have been friends with Hammer.

The soundtrack is indeed grating. The crashing score overpowers many of the scenes, derailing the film noirish approach to the material.

Eaton is indeed great, although the usually wonderful Nolan comes across as a bit cartoonish.

That all being said, I still recommend this film, if only for the experience of seeing Spillane play his own creation.

One side note: WHAT happened to Velda????