User Reviews

(There are Spoilers) Getting the terrible news that his best friend and army buddy Joey De Fellita was killed in a car smash-up private eye Mike Hammer who's on the scene of Joey's accident won't buy the story that Joey's death was at all accidental.In Hammers mind Joey was murdered and murdered for something that he wasn't supposed to know or do.

Going against the advice of his friend in the police department Capt.Pat Chambers Hammer checks out what was the cause of Joey's death and finds out from his friend Ivan Saric a police pathologist that Joey was in fact brutally beaten to death and his death made to look like it was a car accident. That confirms Hammers darkest fears of what really happened to his friend Joey De Fellita. It's now a personal matter with Mike Hammer going all out in finding Joey's killer, or killers, and not caring who's toes he steps on. Hammer turns the entire city upside down and inside out to eventually catch, and personally punish, those who did Joey in.In the process Hammer uncovers a horror so terrifying that even he at first doesn't believe it.

Joey was somehow involved with the mob in being a runner for this Mafioso bigwig named Machetti who through payoffs from corrupt Congressman John O'Hair is expected by hook and by crook to get him elected governor. O'Hair using uncut diamonds as payoff money, being that their untraceable,will have Machetti's political machine hand him over the votes that he needs to get into the state house. In return O'Hair will turn over large sections of the city of New York to Macheitt's money-making and money-laundering legit front, The Macheitti Construction Company. This would give Macheitti & Co. the opportunity to ransack the city in getting no-bid and useless, but very profitable, state contracts from future Governor O'Hair. Which besides putting tens of millions of dollars in Macheitti's pockets will drive tens of thousands of city residents, that includes Joey's mom Mama De Fellita, into the streets without a place to live.

With the exception of Ralph Meeker, who played Mike Hammer in "Kiss me Deadly", Kevin Dobson is about as close as being Mike Hammer as anyone who ever played the rough and tumble private eye. Sure of himself and not at all afraid of who he deals with and how much pull or muscle and firepower that they have. Dobson comes across as an almost suicidal type of guy who would rather get himself killed before making any deal with those that he's battling with no matter how good the deal is. The fact that the Machetti mob, through it's mobbed up lawyer Lou Krone, handed over the person, dead on arrival, who supposedly murdered Joey De Fellita on a platter, or hook, to him doesn't at all stop Hammer from going after Macheitti & Co. Whom he feels deep inside his gut were the real murderers of his friend Joey De Fellita.

Hammer's private secretary Velda played by a perky Cindy Pickett is also an added plus in the film. With her not being the helpless and damsel in distress girl that were used to seeing in most Mike Hammer movies or TV shows. Pickett is more then able to take care of herself with out her hard knocking boss', Mike Hammer, help. It's sad that Dobson didn't get the chance to play in more Mike Hammer films in that he would have improved the character he played in "Margin for Murder" that he so skillfully and brutally depicted in that film; Mike Hammer.