This crime drama is composed of three acts of approximate 10-minute duration each. The story itself, shown in a long flashback style, leads us into the overall reconstruction of the crime, made by a mysteriously masked character.
The film was released 28 August 1916 in Finland. A fragmentary print was recovered in 2001 by the Cinémathèque Française; in 2002 the fragments were preserved, with Swedish intertitles and supplemented with production photographs, by the Svenska Filminstituet in 2002.
Writing about Victor Sjöström and quoted by Charlotte de Silva for the Embassy of Sweden in London, Jon Wengström of the Swedish Film Institute writes, "The pictorial compositions in Havsgamar/Sea Vultures (1916) and the complex narrative structure in the recently rediscovered Dodskyssen/Kiss of Death (1916) show a director in full command of the medium.
