Where Danger Lives / Tension (1950)

A corpse behind. A dead end ahead. Woozy Robert Mitchum and Faith Domergue are on the run in Where Danger Lives. In Tension genre icon Audrey Totter is bad to the bone. But milquetoast hubby Richard Basehart may be worse!Format: DVD MOVIE Genre: DRAMA UPC: 085391150282 Manufacturer No: 115028 Product Description

2 films released by RKO and MGM, distributed by WB!!

WHERE DANGER LIVES: Although, this storyline is full of twists and turns, it fails to arouse any interest whatsoever. The wonderful actor, Claude Rains is in it as Faith Domergues Husband, but only appears 20 minutes in, and dies 28 minutes in.Like I said before, the story fails to interest me. The Film picture quality has been restored wonderfully, and the Documentary is insightful and interesting.
TENSION: This film is very engaging, and I enjoyed it alot!!The documentary is good, and the picture quality superb. May 8, 2008

A Classic Without "Tension"

This is a Film Noir double bill from Warner Home Video and easily the best of them is the 1950 RKO classic "Where Danger Lives".
From a sturdy screenplay by Charles Bennet it is tautly directed by John Farrow and remains one of the studio's better Noirs. Robert Mitchum heads the fine cast as a young doctor who unwittingly falls for one of his patients unaware she is somewhat psychotic. In her first film - taking over from Jane Greer - Faith Domergue is excellent - if a little quirky - as the Femme Fatale. During their fleeting affair she lands Mitchum in a dangerous criminal predicamant when she has him believe he has killed someone (unbeknownst to him it was she who suffocated the hapless victim with a cushion) and together they must go on the run from the police. The picture ends tragically in a shootout at the Mexican border.
A terrific little thriller with the stars in excellent form and in a movie that has lost none of its class over the years. And watch out for a scene near the end of the picture where Mitchum falls down a staircase without a stunt double. Mitchum clearly does the fall, but ouch! it must have hurt!
Others in the cast are Charles Kemper, the director's wife Maureen O'Sullivan and there's a wonderfully realised scene-stealing cameo by the great Claude Rains.
Sharply photographed in black & white by Nicholas Musuraca and with an
atmospheric score by the great Roy Webb "Where Danger Lives" emerges as
one of the finest examples of the Noir style of picture making and also
displays the long gone but not forgotten craftsmanship that was Hollywood's Golden Age.

Unfortunately, none of the above praise can be applied to the second feature on the disc - MGM's 1949 stinker "Tension".
Poorly written and directed this movie is full of ludicrous characterisations and unlikely situations. The inconceivable relationship
between a mild mannered and wimpish pharmacist - blandly played by
Richard Basehart - and his overtly floozie wife (a risible Audrey
Totter) is totally implausible and unconvincing. And when she unsurprisingly leaves him for one of her playmates (Lloyd Gough), the pharmacist - instead of being euphoric and over the moon with his new found good fortune - unbelievably plots revenge and attempts to kill Gough but chickens out at the last minute. The guy gets murdered anyway and our pharmacist is immediatly suspected by Homicide detective Barry Sullivan (another bland performance). So who did it?? Well, at this stage of the movie you really couldn't care less since it is all so badly executed and rendered ridiculous by director John Berry. Mr.Berry has no idea of pace or style and can put nothing in front of the camera that will prevent you from nodding off!
Best things about this turkey is the smooth Monochrome cinematography by
the great Harry Stradling, an effective score by a young Andre Previn and an early appearance by the lovely Cyd Charisse before she found her dancing shoes. Perhaps she could have saved the picture had she given us a few steps! Huh?.

In its favour however are the heaps of extras that come with the disc which boasts trailers, commentaries and featurettes for both films.
In the meantime I give it a four star rating solely for the RKO Mitchum classic! March 20, 2008

"Nobody pities me!"

Made largely to showcase Howard Hughes' latest inamoratas Faith Domergue, Where Danger Lives starts off a little slow and more than somewhat unintentionally amusing, laying on nice young doctor Robert Mitchum's nice guy credentials with a trowel (he even tells a bedtime story about Elmer the Elephant to a little girl in an iron lung). Things don't immediately improve once he meets Domergue's suicidal femme fatale, but once Claude Rains turns up for his one scene as her `father,' it starts getting better and better and heads straight for near-classic status as they find themselves on the run, Mitch nursing a surprisingly medically accurate serious concussion ("I may talk rationally but my decisions may not make much sense.") and Domergue manifesting some pretty unpleasant symptoms of her own ("Nobody pities me!"]). Of course, we know he must be having problems even before he takes that bump on the head since no-one in possession of a full set of marbles would pass over nurse Maureen O'Sullivan for Faith Domergue even if she doesn't take off her surgical mask to answer the phone - O'Sullivan may have been the director's wife but she's barely seen without it. As their bolt for the border goes increasingly badly, the eternally underrated John Farrow mirrors his condition with a more surreal set of characters and situations - not least a truly bizarre plot development during `Whiskers Week.' The great Nicolas Musuraca does his usual wonders with the black and white cinematography and Farrow throws in one of the longest of his uninterrupted single takes, a key seven-minute hotel room scene that's so fluid and cinematic despite consisting of only two people in a small, dingy room that you don't even notice there are no cuts.

DVD supporting feature Tension is an okay MGM noir from 1949, but, despite a bizarre opening with Barry Sullivan's homicide cop explaining to camera the principles of tension with the aid of a rubber band, it's noticeably anything but tense. Richard Basehart's the downtrodden druggist who comes up with the perfect plan to kill sluttish wife Audrey Totter's new `big man' Lloyd Gough only to decide not to go through with it (understandable since in the meantime he's fallen for Cyd Charisse, which is a definite trade up). Unfortunately for him, someone does the job for him and the false identity he has created to take the blame becomes the prime suspect...

If the pitch is similar to Henri-Georges Clouzot's Quai des Orfevres, made two years earlier, the execution couldn't be more different, with the first half focussing on Basehart's preparations and the second on Sullivan and William Conrad's investigation as the lead cop decides the best way to solve the case is to hit on Totter. The absence of suspects is a bit of a problem (the motive for the killing is never discovered), but it ticks over efficiently enough even if it could have benefited from a tighter running time and a sharper script.
January 18, 2008

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