the audience applauded

Plot so thin, it passes unnoticed.

Horrible, fascist and poorly acted

It isn't all that great, actually. Really cheesy and very predicable of how certain scenes are gonna turn play out. However, I guess that's the charm of it all, because I would consider this one of my guilty pleasures.

Vincent Price really made this movie fun.It was good,but he just gave it much more.Can't believe everyone wouldn't be falling over laughing during his scenes.His great hunter/fisherman is an absolute hoot,and Mitchum's character needs his help like no other.He organizes the rescue team when Mitchum is fighting for his life.It is a serious movie,except for Price's scenes,and Jane Russell is excellent,as Mitchum,McGraw is typical bad guy,Burr okay with good performance,but would've like Lee Van Cleef better as gangster.Burr too soft and Van Cleef has reputation as cruel dude in different films.Glad Price didn't get taken out while he cleaned out the bad guys.

One of the first things I noticed about this entry was its running time. Weighing in at just on two hours it's considerably longer than other Mitchum films of the time, genre, and RKO titles in general, for example the follow-up teaming of Mitchum and Russell, Macao, the following year was much shorter as were Out Of The Past and The Big Steal. Fortunately it's not ALL flab but there's no hiding that Hughes shot it three times before achieving something he wanted to release. The result is a weird blend of two genres one anticipating My Favorite Year features a picture stealing Vincent Price as a blend of Errol Flynn and Jack Barrymore whilst the other is a bod- standard noir with spin in which Raymond Burr plays a Lucky Luciano type mafioso in exile who has eyes to get back to the States and hatches a plan that requires only a patsy of similar build, height, etc, from whom a plastic surgeon can graft the face onto Burr. Enter Mitchum's easy-come, easy-go gambler. Thow in the likes of Marjorie Reynolds, Charles McGraw, and Jane Russell and you have an elegant noir on your hands. Well worth a look.

I love "film noir," and this film was OK until the end. It's almost as if this were two separate movies, classic dead serious film noir at the beginning later turning into a dopey attempted comedy at the end. I know Vincent Price was a fine actor, but his character was way too silly and "over the top." Also, the hypodermic scene was way too dragged out. Robert Mitchum was, as usual, great as ever; but I wonder if he wasn't embarrassed by the really goofy ending. It's for these reasons that I cannot rate the film higher. However, the thought occurred to me that maybe this was some kind of "experimental ending," some attempt to surprise the audience. However, for me it just didn't work, I wasn't surprised but rather disappointed by the "transition."

Robert Mitchum shows up in Southern California, having just been released from the slams, and hasn't got a shoe to his foot. Some strangers show up and offer him ten grand to go on a mission to a Mexican resort where he will be given a lot more money. What is the mission? They won't say.So Mitchum, having nothing better to do, flies to the lodge on the ocean where a room is waiting for him. Nobody greets him. None of the other guests seem to know who he is or what he's doing there. The others are of diverse type -- seedy-looking guys with mustaches or dark glasses, Vincent Price as an egomaniacal actor putting moves on the nightclub canary he's squiring around, Jane Russell. Mitchum noses through them, asks questions, refuses drinks, does small favors, flirts with Russell. That's what he does for a full hour. That's ALL he does, while the plot stagnates and develops a severe case of pond scum.Finally he discovers that the mastermind behind his mysterious vacation is Raymond Burr, a deported gangster who wants -- somehow -- to take Mitchum's face and identity and make them his own, while disposing of what remains of the original Mitchum. That way, Burr will be able to sneak back across the border posing as somebody else.It's a LONG sucker too, and I found it nearly excruciating to sit through. I saw one second-unit shot of a beach somewhere. The rest was all shot on an RKO sound stage. The place is colorless. The art direction and set dressing is abominable. Nothing looks like Mexico. At best it looks like a failed attempt to duplicate somebody's sunken living room in the San Fernando Valley. If you must watch it, just for the hell of it, check out the paintings on the walls. I am no art snob but these are truly offensive. They fall into two categories. Some are bad paintings of sailing ships, straight off a motel room wall. The others look like something Juan Miro might have done on mushrooms.There are some tense moments towards the end, when Mitchum is beaten to a pulp aboard Burr's yacht and is about to be injected with a drug that will render him immediately unconscious and, when he wakes up, will have turned his brain to tofu. But this is undercut by Vincent Price's attempts at humor while trying to board the ship against the resistance of its hoodlum crew. While the film could use some comic moments, the suspenseful, action-filled climax isn't the place for them. Every dilatory slapstick gag associated with Price is an irritation because, only a few yards away, the scenes in which Mitchum is fighting for his life are treated in dead earnest.It's not worth much further comment. Mitchum walks sleepy-eyed through his part. Jane Russell has big knockers. Vincent Price was a much better narcissistic ham actor in "Theater of Blood." Two of the tunes are memorable: "Five Miles To San Berdoo," which is a variation of "Ninety-nine Bottles of Beer on the Wall," and the dance music played in the resort's night club, which is a shameless rip off of Gershwin's "The Lady Is A Tramp." It has a few virtues. One is that the photography is dark and menacing, very nicely done. (A beach scene fails completely.) Another is -- well, that's the only virtue I can think of. No -- wait! I thought of two more major cinematic breakthroughs! (1) When Tim Holt and Charles McGraw are listening to a report on a short-wave radio, the Morse Code is correct. "TOA" followed by a number, which Holt accurately interprets as "time of arrival." And the call sign of the station they're at is "XFO." Well, if it's a commercial land-based Mexican station, the call sign must consist of three letters and the first one must be "X". (2) Some brief but pleasing shots of two popular small airplanes of the post-war period: a V-tailed Beechcraft Bonanza and a low-wing Ryan Navion. That's about it for the good parts.