Mike heads to his place, only to be abducted by two gangsters and taken to a place to be tortured. Mike, tied to bed posts, face down, breaks free of his bonds and kills his captors. True to the tradition of Mickey Spillane novels, Kiss Me, Deadly ends (Chapters 12-13) in true Mike Hammer fashion.

Until 1997, all known copies in circulation of "Kiss Me Deadly" ended rather abruptly: the wounded Mike Hammer stumbling through the beach house looking for his partner Velda, and then there's a couple of brief shots of the house exploding and burning, with "The End" superimposed on the final shot.

The correct sequence of the ending, which is not exactly as scripted, consists of four events: (1) the house begins to explode; (2) Hammer and Velda stumble into the surf and turn to look back; (3) the house explodes into flames and the title, "The End," emerges from the center of the frame, comes forward optically, and remains superimposed over a last shot (4) of Hammer and Velda holding each other at the water's edge.