With few exceptions, movies have one ending. Most of the time, the ending you see on the screen is not only the ending intended, it’s the only ending anyone ever had in mind. Sometimes the ending is changed, though, either to make a movie play better to specific audiences or because some studio head didn’t like how it came off. Some famous examples are Fatal Attraction, in which the Glenn Close character kills herself while framing the Michael Douglas character (test audiences didn’t react well and another ending was filmed where Douglas and Anne Archer off Close) and Brazil which had not only a different, happier, ending put on the movie by the studio but had many changes throughout the film as well. And, of course, Suspicion is famous for altering the plot from the novel upon which is was based. There’s still debate over whether Hitchcock didn’t like keeping Cary Grant from being the killer (read all about under the “Production” header here for the details). Now this post isn’t about alternate endings, really. If you like, you can go to Google, type in “alternate endings” and be treated to thousands of links for “The Ten Best/Worst Alternate Endings in Movies” that will contain variations for the same movies from the last 25 years or so (these lists are never aware that movies existed before 1990). No, it’s more about how a little change can make a big difference and how I’ve thought about one movie again and again because its ending, how they chose to end it and how they almost did, haunts me still. And be warned, SPOILERS abound.
I may as well mention at this point that the movie is Kiss Me Deadly and it airs tonight on TCM. In the great 1955 noir thriller, Mike Hammer (Ralph Meeker) ends up in a house on the beach with his lover and assistant, Velda (Maxine Cooper), locked in a bedroom unable to escape. Gabrielle, aka Lilly Carver (Gaby Rodgers), is there too, having just disposed of her partner in crime, Dr. Soberin (Albert Dekker). She’s got a box filled with a very dangerous, powerful, and precious material. It could be worth a fortune if she gets it to the right people, just so long as she doesn’t open it. Which, of course, she does. Right after shooting Mike. When she opens the box, the glowing heat and smoke take over, burns her alive and blows up the house. Before it does, Mike gets up, finds Velda, and escapes to the water with her. Except on re-release.
After the movie’s original release, over a minute of the ending was cut out and the appearance was given that Mike and Velda simply die in the house along with Gabrielle. No one knows if this change was intentional or just some weird glitch that occurred between sending the prints out and getting them back after the original run. Sometimes, different movie houses in different parts of the world made their own cuts to movies (see: Cinema Paradiso) and sometimes, through mistake or happenstance, those prints stayed in circulation. Did that happen here because some movie house felt Mike and Velda should die, too? Who knows. What is known is that a lot of people only knew that ending and liked it. They figured it symbolized the end for everyone, that maybe after the house goes up, the whole damn world goes up in a massive nuclear chain reaction. It may not be the original ending but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t work.
But what if that was the original ending?
What if the producers in charge originally insisted that Mike and Velda escape for a happy ending (because producers and studio heads do that kind of thing) and that ending, the one that wound up in theaters and on the Criterion release, is the imposter? What if, after the initial release, the director now felt safe ending it how he wanted, with everyone dying, and ordered it cut that way? I mean, the director was Robert Aldrich so that’s not exactly a stretch. And since there doesn’t seem to be any hard evidence one way or the other, who’s to say which ending is the real one?
The question is, which ending do you prefer?
I actually prefer the ending that Criterion has deemed an extra, the one that ended up on prints for several decades after the original release. Call me a nihilist, but I like the ending where everyone dies. Not because I like that kind of thing in general, because I think it works for these characters. Since everyone involved is pretty much either a scumbag or only one or two degrees removed from one, everyone dying feels like apocalyptic justice for a world gone mad with greed and corruption. Besides, Mike just got shot in the gut point blank. I don’t really see him getting back up, freeing Velda, and heading to the surf after that. I see the ending where Mike does get up, get Velda out of the bedroom, and head to the surf as the house crackles and sparks and ignites, as a bit too optimistic for these kids. Oh, I like these characters, don’t get me wrong, but Mike and Velda meeting their end going up in smoke seems just about perfect to me.
If you haven’t seen Kiss Me Deadly, watch it tonight and see one of the greats. I honestly don’t know, ahead of time, which cut TCM is showing but I imagine it’s the original release where Mike and Velda get out. If you haven’t seen it, and read all of these spoilers anyway, just imagine them not getting out and tell me what you think. Does Kiss Me Deadly work better with a bit of hope at the end or as an apocalyptic nightmare? I know which side I take. Which side are you on?