cult film freak: ROBERT MITCHUM & WILLIAM BENDIX IN 'MACAO' W/ JANE RUSSELL

Title: MACAO Year: 1952 Rating: **1/2

Produced at the same time as HIS KIND OF WOMAN, another Robert Mitchum adventure-noir opposite RKO owner Howard Hughes's in-house starlet Jane Russell, and both mostly taking place on a large boat...

There it's Mexico and here it's the titular Asian sampan-filled location of MACAO, which is mostly viewed through a vast number of rear projected shots as Mitchum meets fellow lonesome-traveler William Bendix, his co-star from THE BIG STEAL, while Russell... again a lounge singer... is involved with a nightclub's seedy yet sophisticated owner...

Robert Mitchum and William Bendix in MACAO

In that, regular noir heavy Brad Dexter (99 RIVER STREET) is partnered with substitute director Nicholas Ray's wife Gloria Grahame (THE BIG HEAT), who could have been the perfect sultry femme fatale...

But at the 11th hour she actually frees a captured Mitchum, leading to nifty sequences running throughout the studio-built dockside streets: making MACAO more an involving action-programmer than the crime-thriller it could have been if not only Grahame but Bendix and especially Russell had more input.