You should have saved the "nuclear flash" for a thread on Robert Aldrich's _Kiss Me Deadly_ (1955), a spectacle of cold-war masculinity (most prominently symbolized by Mike Hammer, his "Great Whatzit," and "the liar's kiss that says I love you, and means something else" that Lily Carver was taught to ask for) that annihilates itself and everything else besides with a Big Bang. Christina Bailey near the beginning of the film says to Hammer, "You have only one real, lasting love--yourself." She also muses with irony, "Woman--the incomplete sex. What does she need to make her complete? Why! A man, of course!" Her irony doesn't save her, however. Male narcissism is deadly indeed.
Yoshie