Borderline Case

People seem to have trouble assigning a genre to Borderline - romantic comedy, film noir, road picture? Actually, it's a classical example of the romantic noir comedy set in Mexico, just like The Big Steal and or His Kind of Woman.

In Borderline, narcotics cop Claire Trevor goes undercover in Mexico to find out who is sending shipments of heroin over the border using married tourists as mules. She tries to vamp suspected kingpin Raymond Burr (the villain in His Kind of Woman come to think of it), who gets hi-jacked by Fred MacMurray. The gag is (minor spoilage) MacMurray turns out to be an undercover customs agent on the same mission as Trevor. The rest of the movie has them racing for the border with a consignment of contraband, set on turning each other in.

Viewers of a certain age will associate Fred MacMurray more with Disney movies than film noir, but I guess most people are familiar with Walter Neff ("with 2 Fs, like Philadelphia") now. He handles the funny tough guy with no problems. Claire Trevor is known as a noir doll, but I'm not entirely convinced. She comes off as an Eve Arden type, a wisecracker, but not too tough.

Anyway, I don't know where this genre comes from - except that Hollywood types must have been familiar with the tourist circuit from Tijuana to Ensenada. I suspect they must have been fun to film, especially if they went on location. They're fun to watch, too, if you like this sort of thing.