Mystère à Mexico

I am not a great fan of this movie, despite it is a RKO product. But mystery topics have always bored me to death. It is short, rare and from a great director whose it is always interesting to watch the movies. Typical B movie with second rank actors and with also an atmosphere that you could purchase only in forties films: settings, music, camera work, actor's play, topics. Robert Wise will do better for RKO pictures with BORN TO KILL, GAME OF DEATH, THE BODY SNATCHER and many more short features made for Howard Hughe's company. Another future great director began with RKO: Richard Flesicher. And I also forgot Mark Robson.

An early film from Robert Wise, the much acclaimed director of different science fiction and musical films, this is quite different stuff to what he would later be best known for, and in all honestly it is noticeably inferior too. It is far from being a poor film, but the production is far off being great too, with a quite lifeless, underdeveloped central romance and not too much to get excited over in terms of the mystery plot and technical credits. To fans of its director, the film will certainly be of some interest, but to other viewers it might well sit as mediocre: neither really good nor really bad.

Insurance investigator Steve Hastings is sent to track down missing agent Glen Ames in Mexico and a $200k neckless. He follows Ames' sister Victoria to Mexico City and insinuates into her life.

Lundigan is playing the lead with an off-putting amount of cheese. It's so deliberate that it doesn't make sense. He's more likely to drive Victoria away and that seems to be what's going on. Normally, she would be avoiding him like the plague. Quite frankly, she should call the cops on him. The character actually requires him to be charming. This is charm in the cheesy movie way. In addition, Carlos makes no sense. He's just a driver who comes in to help Steve whenever it's needed. He just shows up. It's obvious that he's hiding something. A better way to situate the character is for Steve to hire him right off the bat as his driver. Or else he's just always hanging around Steve who is too clueless to notice. What I do like is the noir style and the exoticism of Mexico. I really like that the two leads hardly speak a word of Spanish. They are fish out of water. The story is functional as noir crime mystery except I really hated Lundigan's opening performance. It's so cheesy that it destroyed the noir feel. It took awhile to reclaim the style.

MYSTERY IN MEXICO is a unique film from 1948. The unique points are as follows: 1. It was shot in Mexico with great locations. 2. An earlier directing effort from two time Academy Award winning director Robert Wise. 3.I liked how the Mexican Police were portrayed as helpful and saving the day instead of always the usual stigma of being corrupt. The movie begins with an Insurance Investigator given the assignment of finding a missing investigator in Mexico who may or may not have stolen a valuable necklace. On a collision course, the missing investigators sister played by Jacqueline White is followed by Steve Hastings the insurance investigator played by William Lundigan. They team up to find the brother and necklace and they have many adventures and encounters leading up to the climax of the film. This film would be perfect for a remake because so few have seen this original film. It could be improved by taking out the obnoxious behavior of the Steve Hastings character at the beginning of the movie. His banter at Jacqueline White on the plane headed for Mexico made me want to have him maced or tazed. He calms down into a normal person after that and gives a good performance.

Not much to this. William Lundigan plays Steve Hastings, an insurance inspector checking into the theft of a diamond necklace in "Mystery in Mexico" from 1948. The film also stars Jacqueline White and Ricardo Cortez.

The first suspect in the case is actually an insurance investigatorGlenn Ames (Walter Reed) for the same company - it looks like he has taken off with the goods. Steve follows Ames' sister (White) to Mexico. They suspect she might be in cahoots with him.

Here's the thing - Steve Hastings is obnoxious. For a man who is trying to keep track of a woman by befriending her, he does a lousy job with his sexist attitude. In old films, sometimes the more wolf-like a man is, the better is chances are - go figure. I just saw another film, "Career Woman" where the male character was even worse and got the girl in the end.

At 66 minutes, the film has a lot of dead space. Finally, towards the end, there's a murder. Big yawn. Lundigan is very attractive and in my opinion deserved better. Jacqueline White was lovely and feisty. Ricardo Cortez' leading man and A movie days were over. He would eventually return to Wall Street, where he had once worked as a runner. He did very well, too.