Mystery in Mexico

William Lundigan complained about always being given and accepting lousy parts;it was not always true : "follow me quietly" by Richard Fleischer he made the following year is a really good thriller and he had a truly great director.

In "mystery in Mexico " he 's got Robert Wise !Wise retained flair for film noir ("the captive city" "odds against tomorrow" and "the set -up");it shows in the very first sequence and in the Mexican family's house in the final scenes;the rest of the movie ,unfortunately,fluctuates between comedy (Lundigan and the supporting cast do not seem to take the story seriously;Jacqueline White has different ways to give "short cuts" );and we don't care about the necklace (probably bought in a dime store).

All in all,this is pretty entertaining stuff if you do not ask too much and the actors have a certain spontaneity,particularly the lead himself.

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.

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.

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.

This is quite a decent little crime thriller that starts with what looks like a burglar being shot. Turns out, though, that the victim was an insurance investigator and "Hastings" (William Lundigan) is now despatched to Mexico to find out just what happened to him. In trying to piece things together, he encounters the sister of the missing man. "Victoria" (Jacqueline White) is also trying to track down her missing brother. Quite what she sees in him is anyone's guess - he's actually quite an odious fellow - but click they do and are soon on the case of the rather obvious villain of the piece. This film is probably only notable as a project from Robert Wise but it doesn't hang about and though the plot does follow the usual tram lines a little too readily, there's a lively effort here from White and it passes an hour easily enough.