A once-idealistic doctor from a small mining town sells his integrity for a big city practice treating wealthy dowagers. If you said to yourself "That sounds like an incredibly dull premise for a noir," give yourself a gold star. Nothing to see here but a bunch of heavy-handed speechifying and simplistic class distinctions. I've never cared for Charlton Heston (with the possible exception of TOUCH OF EVIL) and here he does a lot of jutting out his chin and looking handsome and delivering his lines with zero conviction. Lizabeth Scott is an actress I run hot and cold on... in this case, quite cold. She's entirely uninteresting as a "bad girl" whose primary vice is a mild materialist streak. I was also rather annoyed by Mildred Dunnock, playing Heston's hand-wringing mother. The script is just awful and photographically, the film is a dud, with a few instances of noticeably poor shot continuity (not a deal-breaker, but a pet peeve of mine). There's no tension, no real conflict, no doubt about how everything's going to turn out okay in the end. Bad for you, bad for me, bad for everyone.
Review of Bad for Each Other
