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6/10
Senior Film Conservator
A definitive 6/10 rating for a film that redefined the boundaries of cult cinema. The Death Kiss remains a cornerstone of transgressive art.
If you're a fan of movies about movies—especially the kind that smell like old film stock and stage dust—The Death Kiss is a fun, if slightly lopsided, way to spend an hour or so. If you have no patience for 1930s pacing or actors who act like they're still on a theater stage, you'll probably want to skip this one entirely.
The premise is pretty straightforward: someone gets killed during a movie shoot. It’s the ultimate "who did it" scenario because, obviously, everyone on set was holding a prop gun or standing in the shadows anyway. It reminded me a bit of the frantic energy in The Way of Lost Souls, where the atmosphere does a lot of the heavy lifting for the actual plot.
Bela Lugosi is in this, which is always a treat for people who like to see him do more than just play the cape-wearing villain. He’s got this intensity that feels like it belongs in a much bigger, more expensive picture. Whenever he’s on screen, the movie suddenly feels like it has a pulse, even if the rest of the scene is just people standing around talking in rooms that look like they were built yesterday.
There is this one moment where a character is just sort of pacing behind a camera, and the way the light hits the floorboards makes the whole set look suspiciously like a cardboard box. It’s weirdly charming. It doesn't look like a real location, but it makes you feel like you're right there, tripping over cables.
The mystery itself? It’s fine. It’s not going to blow your mind, and you might guess the killer before the characters do. But that’s not really why you watch these things, is it? You watch them for the hats, the snappy dialogue that sounds like it was written on a napkin during lunch, and that specific, grainy black-and-white quality that makes everything feel slightly dangerous.
I found myself zoning out a bit during the mid-section where everyone is running around the soundstage. It felt like they were just trying to fill time until the next big reveal. It’s not quite as weird as Das Geheimnis des Abbe X, but it definitely has its own brand of studio-era oddness.
The acting is exactly what you'd expect. Everyone is either shouting their lines or whispering them like they’re confessing a crime. It’s all very heightened. Sometimes the chemistry between the leads just vanishes into thin air, and you’re left watching two people talk to a wall. But hey, it’s a murder mystery, not a documentary.
A few stray thoughts:
It’s not a masterpiece. It’s not even a particularly great mystery. But there’s a certain grit to it that I really appreciated. It feels like a movie made by people who were just happy to be working on the lot that day. Sometimes that’s enough to keep you watching until the final frame. 🎞️
IMDb 6.8
1923
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