More Noir

DVD reviews from The Movie Snob

My traversal of Film Noir Volume 4 is almost complete. I recently watched entries eight and nine, Side Street and Where Danger Lives. In Side Street, an ex-GI living in NYC with his young wife in her parents' apartment yearns to make good. While working as a part-time mail carrier, temptation gets the better of him, and he steals a folder from a shady attorney's office in the belief that it contains a couple hundred dollars. It turns out to hold $30,000, and his attempt to return the loot (which is blackmail money) only gets him deeper in the soup. Not bad, but not great. Call it a C.

In Where Danger Lives, Robert Mitchum (The Big Steal) plays a young up-and-coming doctor in California. As if to demonstrate that doctors can be as dumb as anyone else, he falls in love with a patient--a woman who was taken to the hospital and left there by an anonymous gent after a failed suicide attempt. Once he's fallen head over heels for the mysterious woman, he finds out she is married to a rich older fellow played expertly by Claude Rains (Casablanca). Rains thumps Mitchum on the noggin with a fireplace poker, and Mitchum slugs Rains and apparently kills him. Suffering from a concussion, Mitchum lets his femme fatale talk him into making a run for the border (Mexico, not Taco Bell). Aside from Rains's brief appearance, I didn't think this movie was so hot. D+.