The film is about Davey Gordon (Jamie Smith), a 29-year-old middleweight New York boxer at the end of his career, and his relationship with his neighbor, taxi dancer Gloria Price (Irene Kane), and her violent employer Vincent Rapallo (Frank Silvera).

In New York, veteran welterweight boxer Davey Gordon lives in the same building as taxi dancer Gloria Price.

The two leave their building at the same time to report to their jobs-Davey prepares to fight newcomer Kid Rodriguez, and Gloria is picked up by Vinnie Rapallo, her boss.

He and Gloria were questioned separately, and once the police concluded that Davey acted in self-defense and was not responsible for his manager's murder, he was freed.

Kubrick directed that film between the ages of 23 and 24, and had to borrow $40,000 (equivalent to $459,000 in 2023) from his uncle Martin Perveler, who owned a chain of drug stores in Los Angeles.

Then-model and future writer and television journalist Chris Chase, using the stage name Irene Kane, made her acting debut as the female lead.

[9] When released, the staff at Variety magazine gave the film a mixed review, and wrote: Ex-Look photographer Stanley Kubrick turned out Killer's Kiss on the proverbial shoestring.

His scenes of tawdry Broadway, gloomy tenements and grotesque brick-and-stone structures that make up Manhattan's downtown eastside loft district help offset the script's deficiencies.

[10]In a 2003 review for The New York Times, Janet Maslin wrote: Killer's Kiss brought the director onto more conventional territory, with a film noir plot about a boxer, a gangster and a dance hall girl.

Using Times Square and even the subway as his backdrop, Mr. Kubrick worked in an uncharacteristically naturalistic style despite the genre material, with mixed but still fascinating results.

The actress playing the dance hall girl, billed as Irene Kane, is the writer Chris Chase, whose work has frequently appeared in The New York Times.