Vitals

Val Kilmer as Jack Andrews, cynical private investigator

Nevada, Spring 1989

Film: Kill Me Again
Release Date: October 27, 1989
Director: John Dahl
Costume Designer: Terry Dresbach

WARNING! Spoilers ahead!

Background

This summer’s Car Week wraps with Kill Me Again, John Dahl’s little-known (at least to me, before last year) 1989 neo-noir thriller starring the late Val Kilmer and Michael Madsen opposite Kilmer’s then-wife Joanne Whalley as a dangerous femme fatale.

I’ll admit I was drawn to this as a subject this week due to some stylistic similarities with one of my favorite “car movies”, Vanishing Point (1971), which also features a man in a white shirt and jeans desperately racing a white two-door hardtop V8 through the desert until the car meets a fiery end. In this case, it’s not the nihilistic Kowalski in a Dodge Challenger but our widowed gambler P.I. in his quarter-century-old Cadillac, racing through the sand for a bundle of stolen cash.

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What’d He Wear?

Jack Andrews maintains a simple sartorial “uniform” of unfussy button-up shirts tucked into jeans with his cowboy-flavored tooled leather belt and boots. He cycles through a striped white shirt and a solid sage work shirt before ultimately landing on this plain white oxford cotton shirt for the finale. This shirt is styled with a button-down collar, front placket, breast pocket, and button cuffs that he wears undone and partially rolled up his forearms. As usual, the top few buttons are undone to show the top of his white cotton crew-neck short-sleeved undershirt.

Jack’s mid-blue denim jeans are likely Levi’s 501® Original Fit jeans, styled with the classic five-pocket configuration which includes an inset watch/coin pocket in the right-front pocket and two back pockets detailed with the brand’s signature arcuate stitch and red tab sewn against the back right-pocket seam. He holds them up with a brown intricately tooled leather belt fastened through a large stamped silver concho-style belt buckle. The jeans are cut straight through the legs, with the bottoms covering the decoratively stitched calf-high shafts of his dark-brown leather cowboy boots with their tilted riding heels and wrinkled stitching against the squared toe-boxes.

He peers through black-framed aviator-style sunglasses with the traditional teardrop-shaped lenses, also rendered in black mineral glass. His simple, vintage-styled wristwatch has a stainless steel case and matching expansion band, with a round white dial featuring Arabic numeral hour indices along the outer ring.

Less comfortable in the desert but also part of his kit is a black microfiber polyester-shell windbreaker with a shirt-style collar and straight-zip front. Which he wears while…

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What to Imbibe

…he throws back a bottle of Budweiser in a local dive bar. This “King of Beers” pale lager was introduced in St. Louis in 1876 and grew to one of the most recognizable brand symbols of Americana, often shorthand for no-nonsense masculinity.

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The Car

Jack’s ill-fated luxury ride is an “Aspen white” 1964 Cadillac Coupe de Ville, produced during the last year of the second de Ville generation.

Cadillac first used the “de Ville” branding in 1949 to designate a trim level of its full-size Series 62, splitting them out into the Series 6300 Coupe de Ville and Sedan de Ville for two- and four-door hardtops, respectively. This was in 1959, the same year that Cadillac maxed out its massive tailfins punctuated by dual bullet taillights against an already boat-like 130-inch wheelbase.

GM designer Bill Mitchell oversaw the second generation redesign, launched for the 1961 model year with a restyled body that gradually subdued those famous fins over the following three years. Jack’s 1964 Coupe de Ville was the final year of this second generation, again restyled by this point with a new V-shaped bi-angular grille and fine-bladed fins. However, the most notable change was bumping the sole engine from the older 390 cubic-inch V8 to a massive 429 V8, generating 390 horsepower and exclusively mated to the also-new Turbo Hydra-matic transmission.

1964 Cadillac Coupe de Ville (Series 6300)

Body Style: 2-door hardtop

Layout: front-engine, rear-wheel-drive (RWD)

Engine: 429 cu. in. (7.0 L) Cadillac V8 with Carter AFB3903S 4-barrel carburetor

Power: 340 hp (253.5 kW; 345 PS) @ 4600 RPM

Torque: 480 lb·ft (651 N·m) @ 3000 RPM

Transmission: 3-speed Turbo Hydra-matic automatic

Wheelbase: 129.5 inches (3289 mm)

Length: 223.5 inches (5677 mm)

Width: 79.7 inches (2024 mm)

Height: 55.9 inches (1420 mm)

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How to Get the Look

Jack Andrews twists on Kowalski’s Vanishing Point formula by speeding through the desert in a white oxford shirt tucked into jeans with aviators, adding a dash of western style with his cowboy boots.

• White oxford cotton shirt with button-down collar, front placket, breast pocket, button cuffs
• White cotton crew-neck short-sleeved undershirt
• Mid-blue denim Levi’s 501 Original Fit five-pocket jeans
• Brown tooled leather belt with stamped silver concho buckle
• Dark-brown leather cowboy boots with decoratively stitched shafts, wrinkle-stitched square toes, and slanted riding heels
• Black-framed aviator-style sunglasses
• Stainless steel wristwatch with round white dial on steel expanding band

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Do Yourself a Favor and…

Check out the movie.