Subtitles:

English, None

Extras:

• Commentary by Spillane expert Max Allan Collins

• Interview with Mickey Spillane (29:59)
• Interview with Shirley Eaton (9:03)
• Original Trailer (2:27)

Novelist Mickey Spillane portrays his own creation, Mike Hammer, in The Girl Hunters. Hammer has spent seven years in an alcoholic funk after the supposed death of his secretary, Velda. He is brought back to the land of the living by his old friendly enemy, police lieutenant Pat Chambers (Scott Peters), who wants Hammer to extract some information out of a dying federal agent. This puts Mike on the trail of a subversive communist organization, the key to which seems to be sexy Laura Knapp (Shirley Eaton), the widow of a murdered senator. When Hammer determines that following this espionage trail may lead to relocating Velda, who might not be dead after all, he pursues matters with his usual fascistic tendency to pummel first and ask questions later. The Girl Hunters is the film in which Mike Hammer incapacitates an opponent by literally nailing the latter's hands to the floor. But that's kid stuff compared to the fate in store for the treacherous Laura Knapp. The Girl Hunters was filmed in its entirety in England

Excerpt from MRQE located HERE

Ian Fleming may have posed with a gun for a photograph, but he never got the chance to play his creation James Bond on the screen. Ernest Hemingway was a man of action, but he left the screen portrayals of Robert Jordan and Jake Barnes to professional actors. In fact, authors of popular literature have rarely appeared in more than cameo roles. Of those few who have left their typewriters to step before the camera, Mickey Spillane was the most daring. In The Girl Hunters (1963) he took over the role of his most famous creation, the violence-prone detective Mike Hammer. The results were as rough as Spillane's gumshoe.

Most people today, if they have heard of Mike Hammer, connect him to Robert Aldrich's classic film Kiss Me Deadly (1955) or the 1980's TV series starring Stacy Keach. However, during the 1950's, Mickey Spillane and Mike Hammer were very big indeed. Capitalizing on the post-World War II publishing phenomenon of the pocket-sized pulp paperback, Spillane provided the raw goods for this new kind of fiction. With lurid titles like My Gun Is Quick (1950) and Vengeance Is Mine! (1950) and even more lurid covers heavy on the disheveled dames and blazing handguns, Spillane's books tapped into the desire for heroes who could play as nasty as the villains. In Mike Hammer's world, the code of the fair fight had been destroyed by the horrors of the World War and the new battle against the sneaky Reds.

Gary Tooze

November 26th, 2014