The man, the myth, the Mitchum

While I won't confess to having seen every movie ever made, I'm a little surprised it took me this long to see much of Robert Mitchum's work. Until recently, the only films I had caught were "Cape Fear" and "The Night of the Hunter" -- both of which are worth seeing but not exactly a testament to Bob being a nice guy.

Thanks to TCM, though, I added another couple of movies to the list:

I must have missed the screen door slamming: "Thunder Road"

I knew this was a Mitchum movie because there's an episode of "Cheers" where Coach tells Sam that it's coming on TV, reminding Mr. Malone that they always watch Mitchum movies together. Beyond that, I had no clue about this one.

It soon became clear that this was something of a vanity project for Mitchum, who not only plays the lead but wrote the story and a song. He also got his son to play his kid brother, which is a little weird. But that's what happens when Elvis Presley turns you down for the part.

Mitchum is a moonshine runner in Kentucky ... or Tennessee; could never figure out for sure. Anyway, a big-city guy is muscling in on the family business, at the same time as federal agents -- yes, revenooers, as Snuffy Smith calls them -- are trying to run the shine guys out of business. There's a lot of business going on, people! Yet Mitchum remains cool, outrunning or running through bad guys as needed.

That's about it, and it kind of gets old after a while. I did like learning a bit about how these guys did things, but there never was that much tension, even as people were bumped off. While the movie gets props for not having a nice, neat ending, it still kind of peters out, and didn't really do much for me overall.

Noir you ready for this?: "Out of the Past"

This movie, on the other hand, got better as it went along, and ended up being pretty good the more I thought about it.

Made more than a decade earlier -- when Mitchum was only 29 or so -- "Out of the Past" takes a little while to ramp up, but after about a half hour things start to cook, and after an hour I was definitely interested in where this was going. It didn't hurt that Mitchum started dropping some cool lines, Jane Greer looked great as the femme fatale and a youthful Kirk Douglas was a fun villain.

Our story: Mitchum runs a gas station but is spotted by a guy who works for a mobster. As we learn in a flashback, Mitchum was once hired by the mobster to find a woman who stole from him. Mitchum does, but goes and falls for the girl. They go on the run, but that ends up badly, and Mitchum moves on to pumping gas. Back in the present, the bad guy tells Mitchum he needs to do something to make amends. Sounds like a trap, Bobby thinks, but he goes along for the ride.

As you can guess, there are plenty of twists and turns, and you've gotta work a bit to keep up. But it's not hard to try, given the actors and the story. And like I said, some good lines. I hesitate to list any here and ruin the discovery for yourself, but heck, like you'll remember them if you ever get around to watching this.

Actually, they're all here, so you can decide for yourself. Here are a few of the best, though:

"Oh, Jeff, you ought to have killed me for what I did a moment ago."
"There's time."

"Just get out, will you? I have to sleep in this room."

"Oh, Jeff, I don't want to die!"
"Neither do I, baby. But if I have to, I'm gonna die last."