"The smartest and meanest in the noir cycle, with Ralph Meeker at his sexiest and nastiest as Mike Hammer and a constellation of complicated females, from Maxine Cooper as the hot-to-the-touch Velda to Cloris Leachman and Gaby Rodgers as two dangerously lost women. Praising it for its “thoroughgoing seediness,” Paul Schrader calls it film noir’s masterpiece, and it’s easy to see why."
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