Where Danger Lives: John Farrow

John Farrow's Where Danger Lives is essentially a mediocre film noir that is salvaged by not one, but two terrific lead performances.  Robert Mitchum plays Jeff Cameron,  a doctor who falls in love with a woman named Margo who is brought in one night to the hospital for attempted suicide.  What he doesn't know is that she is already married to a sadistic and violent millionaire.  During a tense confrontation with her husband, Jeff is knocked unconscious.  When he wakes up, he finds Margo's husband has been killed.  Margo tricks a now nearly disabled Jeff into thinking that he murdered her husband.  She forces him to take her to Mexico to avoid the police.  Mitchum terrifically plays his part as a befuddled man who knows that he is being taken advantage of, but can't figure out how.  Much critical praise was given to Mitchum.  But the true star is Faith Domergue as the manipulative and psychotic Margo.  She quakes and simmers with a deep-seated insanity dwelling just below the surface of her regular, smiling demeanor.  By the end of the film she has delivered the line, "Nobody pities me" twice.  The first time it was a murderous condemnation, the second a cynical act of forgiveness.  Once again, let me stress that Where Danger Lives should have been an average film.  But Mitchum and Domergue help make this an engrossing tale of deceit, manipulation, and madness.

7/10