Mitchum plays a too-good-to-be-true doctor--his favorite duty is telling stories to sick children--about to leave fiancée Maureen O'Sullivan to pursue Faith Domergue, a sultry rich girl who's loonier than all of Toontown. Domergue, tailored by Howard Hughes to be a sort of second-unit Jane Russell, can't make sense of this crazy lady, and what starts out as a straightforward melodrama becomes an insane noir with more plot holes than a Swiss cheese. Soon the pair are on the run from having killed her husband Claude Rains, who, despite third billing, is on screen for all of six minutes, and Mitchum is suffering from a concussion which, he tells Domergue, will slowly paralyze and kill him, or maybe not. From there it's a road picture to the Mexican border, with some nice location photography, a no-name supporting cast, and plot implausibilities piling up on their way to an utterly impossible happy ending. Domergue's character is so controlling and freakazoid that we want nothing more than to see her die, and Mitchum, getting a good chance to make the most of his sleepy-eyed macho allure, struggles to keep us from disbelieving the incredible shifts in plot. It's watchable, but it smacks of increasing desperation.
Review of Where Danger Lives
