In this most unconventional mystery, Mickey Spillane’s Mike Hammer is a private detective investigating the odd warning of a frantic hitchhiker: "Remember me." What follows is a virtual upending of the conventions of film noir, from the film’s unredeemable, often brutish anti-hero to its apocalyptic femme fatale. The atomic anxiety of the period is expressed through Hammer’s pursuit of a mysterious, white-hot apocalyptic object, the great "whatzit"—a "Pandora’s box" that is never specifically identified as nuclear but which has decidedly catastrophic results. The paranoia and nihilism are enhanced by the disorienting camera angles and unconventional compositions of Ernest Laszlo and the unique sound design by Jack Solomon.