B&W, 1963, 103m. / Directed by Roy Rowland / Starring Mickey Spillane, Shirley Eaton / Image (US R1 NTSC) / WS (2.35:1) (16:9)
As brutal and twisted as censors would allow, The Girl Hunters is swaggering fun from start to finish and deserves more of a cult following than it already has. Spillane's lack of acting chops makes him a strange and oddly vulnerable Hammer, while the swinging off-kilter atmosphere of sadism and jazz constantly forces the viewer to wonder what kind of psychotic fever dream he's stepped into. By the time Mike decides to constructively use nails on one culprit, many viewers may have to pull their jaws up off the floor. Considering this is from the director of the surreal Dr. Seuss head trip The 5,000 Fingers of Dr. T, the delirious results aren't that surprising. Long unavailable outside of late night TV screenings, The Girl Hunters has been brought to DVD in a marvelous scope edition that preserves the original queasy widescreen compositions. Some shots have a gauzy, faded look, most likely intentional, but the source materials are in good shape and deliver all the way thanks to the surprising anamorphic enhancement for this transfer. On the downside, regular TV sets will exhibit the weird two-tone letterbox bands found on such 16:9 discs as Halloween and Bird with the Crystal Plumage, but it's a minor distraction and easily overlooked.
One of the strangest attempts to translate hard boiled detective fiction to the screen, The Girl Hunters takes the unique step of casting the author himself as his own hero. While Mickey Spillane novels had already been adapted to the screen, most notably with Kiss Me Deadly, Spillane apparently felt he could portray the tough-talking, hard-punching Mike Hammer just as well as anybody else. And he was right. The bitter, strange, and convoluted story wrenches Hammer up from the depths of long alcoholic funk, brought on by the death of his secretary, Velda. Brought in on a new case, he tangles with the lovely and possibly lethal Laura Knapp (Shirley Eaton, the spray-painted girl from Goldfinger) and the memorable Art Rickerby (Lloyd Nolan). Sure enough, it turns out there's an insidious plot afoot to spread Communist agents throughout the United States, and it's up to Mike to take no prisoners regardless of the cost.
