The Girl Hunters

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Bruce M An interesting failure: writer Mickey Spillane cast as his creation Mike Hammer never really works-- the casting is just a gimmick and Spillane is a terrible actor. Especially annoying is the terrible musical score, the sane motif played repeatedly. Only highlight is Bond girl Shirley Eaton spending much of the movie in a bikini. Very little action, lots of exposition dumps such as people reading letters or telegraphs to each other. Rated 2.5/5 Stars •  Rated 2.5 out of 5 stars 07/31/25 Full Review acsdoug D Not sure how Spillane got the idea he could act. The soundtrack is out of place too. It's weird and they play it over and over again. The biggest problem is the story is just plain dull. Rated 1.5/5 Stars •  Rated 1.5 out of 5 stars 08/20/24 Full Review Audience Member Mickey Spillane plays his famous PI creation, Mike Hammer. In this film Hammer has hit a low point and drowning himself in alcohol after his secretary Velda's death. Hammer is sobered up by his frenemy Pat Chambers who wants him to talk to a dying federal agent who will only talk with Hammer, which then sets Hammer off on a investigation involving dirty commies and sexy Shirley Eaton (best know as the girl in "Goldfinger" who is killed by being painted in gold). Spillane is passable, but he's not a real actor and I can't help comparing him to the hard edge that Ralph Meeker brought to his characterization of Hammer in the classic "Kiss Me Deadly." Despite Spillane's unspectacular acting, he did provide some moments of his trademark sharp dialogue. This one is more of a curio than a classic hard boiled detective film. Rated 3/5 Stars •  Rated 3 out of 5 stars 01/31/23 Full Review Audience Member Let's get one thing out of the way: Mickey Spillane can't act. And, yes, this film was some sort of massive ego trip for him, since he plays Mike Hammer here. It turns out though that he's not too bad but no match for Ralph Meeker from Aldrich's dark Kiss Me Deadly (1955) or Stacy Keach in that 80s TV show. The film ends up being a lot closer to the TV show. Hammer has gotten seedy but cleans himself up to find out whether his ex-secretary Velda is still alive and/or the victim of a commie assassination plot. He tries to prove he's a tough guy a few times and he keeps the cops and the feds at bay as he goes it alone. Things get complicated and femme fatale Shirley Eaton (the girl who gets painted gold in Goldfinger) may know more than she lets on. But I'm being generous if I make it sound like the plot holds together - we don't even find Velda in the end. A curiosity at best. Rated 2.5/5 Stars •  Rated 2.5 out of 5 stars 02/04/23 Full Review Audience Member The Girl Hunters (1963) If you want it done right, you've got to do it yourself. Mickey Spillane is playing his own private eye hero, Mike Hammer. No, it's not the old Lite Beer from Miller commercials that he did in the 70s. Although, it might be as comical. This is a low budget detective movie, (and not the best Mike Hammer movie) but it is an interesting take seeing tiny Spillane try to pull it off. The movie opens with the cops pulling a dead drunk Mike Hammer out of an alley. After his secretary, Velda died, he's just been burying himself in a bottle. However, the police Captain Pat Chambers (Scott Peters) wants Mike alive to interview a dying witness who will only talk to him. When Mike talks to the witness, his last dying breath was that the man who tried to kill him is a commie assassin known as the Dragon, and that he may have been the guy who killed Velda. Federal Agent Arthur Rickerby (Lloyd Nolan) is very interested in this case too, but Mike won't tell him what he's been hearing, despite Agent Rickerby getting his detectives license back and the ability to legally carry his 45 automatic. The femme fatale in all this is the widow Laura Knapp played by lovely Shirley Eaton (who you may remember as the golden girl in the 007 movie, Gold Finger). She's beautiful, (and has an ass that you can spout poetry to) and isn't that bad of an actress either. Her late husband may have been killed by the Dragon too. Hammer trolls the seedy side of the city to find out who this Dragon character is and who his handler is. Rated 3.5/5 Stars •  Rated 3.5 out of 5 stars 01/16/23 Full Review Audience Member Pretty tepid outing for Mickey Spiallane's classic P.I. Mike Hammer, notable mostly for the fact that the author plays the character himself, becoming one of the film's major problems, his performance a lump at the center of it. Kenneth Talbot's moody black and white photography and Shirley Eaton in a bikini for half the film are certainly nice to look at, but the acting is lackluster and the story plodding, never building up the necessary pulp energy to be really entertaining. Philip Green's bombastic score is sometimes effective, sometimes overbearing. Rated 2/5 Stars •  Rated 2 out of 5 stars 01/28/23 Full Review Read all reviews

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