cult film freak: ROBERT MITCHUM AND FAITH DOMERGUE IN 'WHERE DANGER LIVES'

Title: WHERE DANGER LIVES Year: 1950 Rating: **

From HIS KIND OF WOMAN to THE BIG STEAL, Howard Hughes's RKO Pictures usually had Robert Mitchum on the run into Mexico wherein WHERE DANGER LIVES is the most lackluster, providing the sleepy-eyed sex symbol a role that didn't technically suit him at all...

As a doctor performing surgery on a little girl (Sherry Jackson), Mitchum's mile-high pompadour above the surgical mask is unintentionally hilarious... and yet his usual low-key performance somewhat carries him through the initial set-up where, after quickly falling in love with gorgeous yet troubled (and secretly suicidal) patient Faith Domergue, the usual noir-device of the old/rich husband being murdered by the young lover happens in an accidental flash...

Sherry Jackson in WHERE DANGER LIVES

A shame since Claude Rains is always a neat villain, and his formidable presence seemed to wake up the tragically lackluster Mitchum beyond the rather sluggish anti-chemistry with his troubled dame (countering token good girl nurse Maureen O'Sullivan, wife of director John Farrow)...

Soon thrust into a let's-get-outta-town road trip to Mexico that... instead of happening upon any title-promised DANGER... is a rather pedestrian odyssey with rural characters more befitting a situation-comedy than the kind of noir-thriller that, in this particular case, Mitchum never actually seems mentally interested, physically involved or emotionally invested in.