IslandGuru Who payed the critics

Protraph Lack of good storyline.

Aedonerre I gave this film a 9 out of 10, because it was exactly what I expected it to be.

FrogGlace In other words,this film is a surreal ride.

disinterested_spectator In some movies, the protagonist will commit some minor offense that will result in his being punished way in excess of what he would seem to deserve.This movie begins in a hospital, which we typically think of as serving the public good. Jeff is a doctor at that hospital, and Julie, his fiancée, is a nurse. We know that their relationship is wholesome, because he regularly gives her a white rose. He is dedicated to his profession, and so much so that a nurse reprimands him for working too hard. To underscore what a good man Jeff is, his patients are children, with whom he has a terrific bedside manner. He tells a story to a girl in an iron lung to help her go to sleep, and then chats with a little boy, promising that they will have more baseball discussions in the future.But it is when he is talking to the boy that we discover Jeff's sin. When the boy mentions that he knows Jeff will be going away, the nurse says, in an apologetic tone, that she told him that Jeff will be going into private practice. Private practice? Oh no! That means he values money more than people.Now, it might be thought that I must be some kind of socialist to condemn a doctor for wanting to go into private practice. On the contrary, I am enough of a capitalist to want to see doctors make a lot of money, either in a hospital or in private practice. And good doctors go into private practice all the time. But the people who made this movie put in the remark about private practice for a reason. Remove that one brief scene with the boy, and the rest of the movie could have been exactly the same, without anyone thinking there was something missing. We would simply believe that Jeff was being punished for being unfaithful to Julie. Because the writers put that line in the movie, we can only conclude that it was supposed to tell us something about Jeff's character, that he was guilty of forgoing his public service for the sake of private greed.It's an old story. Once a man gives in to one sin, he soon gives in to another. Just as he is about to leave the hospital, he is delayed by an emergency attempted suicide. The woman is Margo, and when she wakes up, she sees Julie's rose and thinks it is for her, saying she likes red roses instead. When Margo grabs Jeff's hand to thank him for pulling her through, Julie senses something, raising her eyebrows, and she exchanges glances with Jeff.As it turns out, Julie's doubts and suspicions are justified. Jeff begins dating Margo, bringing her a red rose on a regular basis, red being an obvious symbol for lust, the new sin added to the previous one of avarice. And it turns out that her marriage is based on an exchange of one sin for the other, money in exchange for sex. Jeff only finds out about this later, because Margo has lied to him about her marriage, claiming her husband is her father. This lie leads to a confrontation between the two men, leading to blows, and ultimately to the husband's death. Jeff believes he accidentally killed him.Suffering from a concussion, Jeff cannot think straight, and he lets Margo talk him into fleeing with her. From that point on, everyone they come into contact with wants money from them. By the time they get to the border, they are broke. But then Margo reveals that for years she has been squirreling her husband's money away in a Mexican bank in her maiden name. Jeff further realizes that it was Margo who murdered her husband, smothering him with a pillow. She then tries to smother Jeff, and later shoots him. Then the police shoot her.Her dying confession exonerates Jeff, who awakes in a hospital. It is clear that he and Julie are going to get back together, white rose and all. While nothing is said one way or the other, we suspect that once he recovers and is no longer a patient in this hospital, he will return to the other hospital where he will continue working as a resident. He has presumably learned his lesson about wanting to go into private practice.

edwagreen Physician Bob Mitchum's encounter with an attempted suicide victim leads him to near ruin in this 1950 film. The woman is sly, cunning, mentally disturbed and a liar all in one.Fascinated by her, he soon forgets about Nurse Maureen O'Sullivan and is introduced to the man he thinks is his father, Claude Rains who turns out to be her elderly husband.Striking Rains in self defense, Mitchum leaves the room where unknown to him, our femme fatale finishes him via smothering. The rest of the film is devoted to the two attempting to cross the border into Mexico where our lady claims to have a cache of money hidden there. The escapades include a quick marriage for self-preservation. The two argue as it becomes increasingly clear that our lady, who gave a fine performance, is emotionally unbalanced to say the least.

jzappa This peculiar excursion is skillfully shot by Nick Musuraca in the dark black and white nature of the genre in its era, and is capably helmed by John Farrow, who fruitfully captures these delirious visions. It's by and large a character study of an accomplished man blinded by lust, whose life disintegrates as it falls behind him. Mitchum is the guiltless man who is entrapped, but doesn't understand he's innocent until quite late. Too late? Only the will to live in spite of being so far out of his comfort zone and his senses can save him from this interesting spin on the framed-for-murder predisposition of the formula.Mitchum, as was his modus operandi, once again put on airs of sleepy-eyed detachment and barrel-chested reserve, but in this case, he is interesting and sympathetic, realistically showing how a smart guy and such an experienced doctor could be in such a weak position. He genuinely and believably connects to the emotional and sensory reality of his bewildered character, whose feelings and senses are constantly in flux. Likewise, director John Farrow effectively taps the outlandish, hallucinatory traits in this customary noir plot: Mitchum spends the last half of the film barreling down the dirt roads of southern California with a concussion, fainting cyclically and awakening enclosed by some of the murkiest landscape the U.S. has to present.Yes, Mitchum is cast against type as a stable professional, but actually, I think Faith Domergue is equally if not more accountable for the lack of artifice in Mitchum's performance than he is. From moment to moment, and this is most definitely a movie that lives in the present, she genuinely affects him. They're not just saying lines at one another, overlapping their words and movements with some programmed, bottled manner. The sultry, manic, hard-bitten, shifty-eyed edge is real. What's more, Claude Rains as always is superb, in a small role but a pretty important one, where his every motion looks to be controlled over a maniacal wrath all set to gush out, best illustrated by his malicious grin while meeting his wife's lover. And the film's a pleasingly bizarre screwball streak further sets it apart as a unique entry in the film noir canon.

Ilpo Hirvonen Film-noir wasn't all about amazing masterpieces by Orson Welles, John Huston and Alfred Hitchcock. The genre is full of b-class stories from which the most remembered ones are by Edgar G. Ulmer and Joseph H. Lewis. Robert Mithcum was a big star of these b-class noir films, but he wasn't a bad actor at all. He made on impressive performance in a very good film-noir, which wasn't even close to a b-class movie, Out of the Past (1947) by Jacques Tourneur. Mitchum is also remembered for Angel Face (1952) also a film-noir. Moral complexity, outlaws, dangerous women and desperate men were the trademarks of the genre, which can all be found is this commercial - mostly made for entertainment - film by John Farrow, who directed a few other film-noirs as well such as Calcutta (1947), The Big Clock (1948), Night Has A Thousand Eyes (1948) and His Kind of Woman (1951).The direction by Farrow is at times very conventional and he accidentally makes unintentional comedy in a few scenes. The story gets going when Jeff Cameron, a doctor (an unusual role for Mitchum) sees a suicide patient at his department. The following day he gets a suspicious note from the woman and is asked to meet her at an apartment. Eventually Jeff falls in love with the woman and gets framed for a murder. The rest of the film shows the running away of Jeff and her lover.Running away from the law was also a very common subject for film-noir. Anthony Mann's Desperate (1947) and Alfred Hitchcock's Spellbound (1945) probably being the most remembered ones. Running away always meant something more than just the concrete escape. In Hitchcock's Spellbound John is running away from the police, but also from his subconsciousness. In Where Danger Lives Jeff (Mitchum) is running away from the law and the difficulty of stable life.To my mind Where Danger Lives was a very well made film-noir. It is a very interesting film for all of those interested in film-noir and history of cinema, but it is also a treat for those who enjoy an entertaining thriller every now and then. Even that Mitchum's performance isn't the best one could find it has its own greatness - something similar that Vincent Price has. An entertaining common film-noir.