Kiss Me Deadly Directed by: Robert Aldrich Written by: A.I. Bezzerides Starring: Ralph Meeker, Albert Dekker, Paul Stewart, Cloris Leachman It doesn't take a film noir connoisseur -- of which I am not -- to realize that Kiss Me Deadly is one of the strangest, darkest, and most influential entries in the popular pulp sub-genre. Robert Aldrich's bleak tale of intrigue and cold war paranoia slowly burns in stark black and white, eventually exploding on screen in an unforgettable finale that left everybody asking 'what's in the box?' long before Brad Pitt or Quentin Tarantino. The film opens with a young Cloris Leachman (in her feature film debut), running through the streets wearing nothing but a trench coat. In a fit of desperation, she stands in the middle of the road in an attempt to flag down an oncoming car, sending it swerving into the dirt. The passenger...