The Girl Hunters (1963)

A British-made Mike Hammer film - and is if that isn't bizarre enough, The Girl Hunters (1963) also features Mickey Spillane himself playing his most famous creation, in an adaptation of his 1962 novel of the same name.  Thankfully, the British connection involves the fact that the studio scenes were shot at  Elstree, while exteriors were actually shot in New York.  So, thankfully, we don't get Borehamwood's high street trying to masquerade as Times Square.  The other main evidence of a British connection lies in the presence of Shirley Eaton (sporting an American accent) in the main female role.  Apart from Eaton, the other 'star' name the cast boasts is veteran American character actor LLoyd Nolan, playing Hammer's FBI contact.  It has to be said that Spillane's casting as Hammer, ('Mike Hammer is Mickey Spillane' the credits shout at us), not only makes sense in terms of Hammer being an idealised fantasy version of the author, but also in terms of the lack of polish and roughness he brings to the character in his performance.  Previous actors to have played the part in screen adaptations of Spillane's work, while having the physical presence of the character, always seemed to lack the hardness and sheer vulgarity of his literary counterpart.  Spillane, by contrast, might have lacked the physical presence of Hammer, but has toughness and vulgarity in spades.  He also looks the part for this version of Hammer, jolted out of a seven year alcoholic stupor to take on a new case related to the disappearance of his assistant Velda - Spillane really does look as if he'd been scraped off of the floor of some backstreet dive after a week-long bender.

The film itself follows the plot of the source novel quite closely.  The book had basically been a 'comeback' outing for Hammer, seven years after the previous novel had been published (likewise, this was the first film adaptation in nearly seven years, after 1957's My Gun is Quick), explaining Hammer's absence by the fact that he had become an alcoholic wreck following Velda's disappearance on a case.  The film likewise opens with a drunken Hammer being picked up with by the cops as a dying witness will speak only to hum.  At odds with former police buddy Pat Chambers, who had also been in love with Velda, Hammer allies with FBI agent Rickerby after the dying man, who had been an undercover FBI man himself, gives him information implying that Velda is still alive and somehow linked to the recent murder of a US senator.  Like the book, the film version of The Girl Hunters marks a firm move into espionage territory for the series - although the fourth book of the series 'One Lonely Night ' (1951) had featured domestic communists as the antagonists - a move possibly inspired by the growing popularity of Ian Flemings Bond novels and their subsequent film versions.  Most of the plot sees Hammer searching for a communist assassin known as 'The Dragon', working for a Soviet-controlled espionage network known as 'Butterfly Two', who were behind the senator's murder and are trying to destabilise western governments by assassinating and undermining 'patriotic' politicians.

Despite the espionage trappings, the film still contains all of the classic Hammer elements: brutal violence meted out by good guys and bad guys alike, sadism, misogyny, treacherous women and Hammer taking the law into his own hands.  Whilst still not as brutally violent as the source material, The Girl Hunters is still notably more graphic in its violence than previous Spillane screen adaptations, with hands being nailed to the floor, for instance.  Which isn't to say that Hammer is portrayed as being simply a mindless thug - the film does provide him with some 'character development' compared to his earlier incarnations, in that, despite still being alienated from mainstream society, his patriotism overrides this sufficiently for him to form an alliance with an establishment law enforcement organisation like the FBI.  The film's fidelity to the book, however, is also its downfall, with needless plot complications slowing the pace down and dragging the film out to excessive length.  An overblown musical score from Philip Green, which feels as if it belongs to a completely different film, doesn't help much, either.  That said, veteran director of Hollywood B features Roy Rowland does manage to imbue the film with a modicum of atmosphere and makes the most of his New York exteriors, although the UK studio interiors feel far too bland and generic.  He also makes the most of the action scenes, with Spillane's Hammer engaging in some energetic, brutal and very well choreographed fights.  Unfortunately, also due to its fidelity to its source, the film ends on an anticlimactic note, with Velda still not found, although Hammer now has an address where she might be found.  This mirrored the book, whose ending had led into the next novel in the sequence: 'The Snake' (1964).  Producer Robert Fellows also had the rights to this book and had planned to film it as a follow-up to The Girl Hunters, tying up all of the loose ends from that film, but the movie never materialised, leaving The Girl Hunters forever teetering on the edge of a never-to-be-resolved cliffhanger.  In spite of its many faults, The Girl Hunters still stands as probably the most 'authentic' adaptation of a Mike Hammer novel until 1982's I, The Jury which, while taking liberties with the novel's plot, presented Hammer (Armand Assante) as not just brutal and misogynistic, but downright sleazy, to boot.