Mitchum\u2019s suave indifference gets a workout in 1951\u2019s His Kind of Woman<\/em>, a convoluted and calamitous production from the more eccentric end of Howard Hughes\u2019 Hollywood run. Teaming Mitchum for the first time with voluptuous Hughes muse Jane Russell, the producer sought to sell it as the big screen\u2019s two greatest chests, hiring Out of the Past<\/em> dialogue doctor Frank Fenton to supply ample innuendo and John Farrow to direct. It begins with a fairly standard film noir setup in which Mitchum\u2019s washed-up gambler is given the squeeze by some mysterious gangsters and falls hard for Russell\u2019s gold-digging nightclub singer. But just when you think you know where things are going, the movie quite strangely segues into a breezy ensemble comedy at a Baja resort, where Mitchum and Russell hang around flirting for half the movie, waiting for the bad guys to arrive. It\u2019s astonishing how little of consequence happens during the middle hour or so of His Kind of Woman<\/em>, and I mean this as a high compliment indeed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Who cares about some gangster plot when you\u2019re watching this kind of chemistry? Mitchum and Russell take palpable pleasure in each other\u2019s company, batting the banter back and forth like old pals who happen to be impossibly beautiful physical specimens in the unlikeliest of scenarios, as when she walks in on him ironing his money. (\u201cWhen I\u2019m broke I press my pants,\u201d he explains.) The lackadaisically paced His Kind of Woman<\/em> is full of such oddball digressions, languorous camera movements trained on women\u2019s rear ends (\u201cJohn Farrow\u2019s signature shot,\u201d Mitchum quipped) and an air of tomfoolery best exemplified by Vincent Price\u2019s movie-stealing performance as a vainglorious Hollywood actor who was supposed to be Russell\u2019s latest mark. Price\u2019s hilariously pompous, Shakespeare-spouting prig went over so well in rushes Hughes decided to add more of him, and then more still.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Farrow was famously the only director who could outdrink Mitchum, and such a terror to the camera crew that a bunch of them broke into his trailer and urinated in his secret stash of single malt Scotch. Long after Farrow he\u2019d thought he\u2019d finished the picture Hughes hired Richard Fleischer to come aboard and restage a new ending, in which Price\u2019s swashbuckling actor uses his movie training to lead a rescue effort at sea while Mitchum is being beaten and tortured on a boat by gunsels and a mad scientist plastic surgeon who intends to swap the star\u2019s face with that of a deported organized crime boss, 46 years before Travolta and Cage did it in Face\/Off<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n As amusingly recounted in Lee Server\u2019s excellent 2001 Mitchum biography, titled (what else?) Baby, I Don\u2019t Care<\/em>, the reshoots raged on for months, with Hughes adding additional, bizarre fetishistic flourishes to befall the shirtless Mitchum, filming miles of footage until eventually, one day the fed-up star got so snockered he picked a fight with three stuntmen and destroyed the entire set. When Fleischer finally figured he\u2019d finished the damn picture, Hughes decided he didn\u2019t like the actor cast as the main villain, and demanded all his scenes be reshot with Raymond Burr.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Such chaos is reflected in the final product, which veers between the lightly comic and shockingly brutal on a sometimes moment-to-moment basis, especially in that exorbitantly protracted final action sequence, which winds up comprising a full third of the movie\u2019s 120-minute running time, during which Russell is unfortunately locked in a closet. Citing \u201cthe crudest, cheapest kind of sensationalized violence,\u201d The New York Times<\/em> called<\/a> His Kind of Woman<\/em> \u201cone of the worst Hollywood pictures in years.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n And yet this lurching, misshapen movie is somehow rather wonderful to watch, feeling adventurous and exciting in ways missing from other movies made by more stable individuals. There\u2019s a mania to His Kind of Woman<\/em>, a sense of recklessness I also get from pictures like Hudson Hawk<\/em> or Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom<\/em>, where you feel like the train has long ago left the station and these filmmakers are gonna keep careening down the tracks no matter what. Even if they run out of tracks.\u00a0 \u201cHis Kind of Woman\u201d is now streaming on the Criterion Channel<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/11\/his-kind-of-woman-1-1024x576.jpg\")
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