Pun Salad

Jeff Bailey (Robert Mitchum) has a pretty good life. He lives in a small California town near Lake Tahoe, and runs a gas station. He even has a devoted girlfriend whose only flaw is an unfortunate littering habit. But one day, a menacing thug shows up from—guess where—out of the past! It turns out that, years previous, Jeff was a private eye who was sent by a charming gangster (Kirk Douglas) to track down a young woman. Her only flaw was that she tried to kill him and ran off with $40K of his dough.

Jeff is an excellent detective, and trails the young woman down to sunny Acapulco. But—bad news—it's Jane Greer, and she's enough to give even an honest dick some serious thoughts about double-crossing his sleazy employer and otherwise engaging in sinful behavior. It doesn't work out well.

This flick has one of the twistiest plots I think I've ever seen in a major motion picture. There's also a lot of truly loopy "hard-boiled" dialogue. (E. g.: "Oh, Jeff, I don't want to die!" "Neither do I, baby, but if I have to I'm gonna die last." That line wouldn't work for anyone but Mitchum, I think.) Many, many characters, most of them dishonest double-crossing sociopaths. Not everyone survives.

This made me look for the 1987 Saturday Night Live episode where Mitchum hosted. They did a funny video parody of Out of the Past titled "Out of Gas", and even got Jane Greer to cameo. Unfortunately, it was excised from the episode that Netflix offers for streaming. In fact, Mitchum is not in the streaming episode at all except for the opening monologue and the goodnight sequence. You suck, Netflix!