Yes, Mr. Hammer, could you find my viscera? Someone seems to have sucked it out of me.
Mickey Spillane was not always content to simply write his books concerning leading man Mike Hammer, but once to actually play Mike Hammer in a movie, and that was in The Girl Hunters (1963). Hammer’s assistant and love interest, Velda, disappeared 7 years ago, apparently dead, and Hammer has crawled into a bottle and pulled the stopper in afterwards. But when a dying man appears with information suggesting Velda may still be alive, Hammer discovers purpose for his life has been restored.
The bullet that killed the man leads to another man killed with the same gun, a US Senator, and leads Hammer into danger where trusting the wrong attractive woman could get him killed. But Velda, mysterious Velda, summons him onwards, even as he discovers her concealed previous career as an OSI operative during the War. Hammer’s attention to detail and a sort of provocative caution serves him well as he solves more than one crime at a time, leading to a satisfying crescendo of betrayal and revenge.
The music is irritatingly repetitive, the audio is somewhat defective, but the cinematography is satisfactory and the story is not as predictable as one might expect. It’s no award winner, but it’s a respectable effort. And Spillane is not awful.
