Desert Fury

A celebration of small town weirdness in gorgeous Technicolor, Lewis Allen’s Desert Fury is by no means an excellent film but it’s a must-watch for noir fans because of its outstanding cast, vibrant colors, and high degree of psychosexual ambiguity. Kicked out of boarding school, Paula Haller (Lizabeth Scott) returns home to her overprotective mother Fritzi (Mary Astor), a wealthy casino owner in Chuckawalla, Nevada, where Paula resumes dating old flame Tom Hanson (Burt Lancaster), a former rodeo star turned local police officer, but finds herself physically drawn to gangster-widower Eddie Bendix (John Hodiak), who we soon learn has a secret past involving Fritzi. In his film debut, Wendell Corey plays Johnny, Eddie’s best friend, meticulous roommate, and probable gay lover (“He won’t leave me; I come in too handy to him”) who resents any woman who tries to come between them. Rossen’s script has plenty of holes and none of the performances are career bests, but Allen casts a dreamy haze over Chuckawalla that raises our eyebrows the more we watch: aside from Johnny’s romantic obsession with Eddie (“Some guys don’t know what they want”), the relationship between Paula and her mother (having brought Brigid O’Shaughnessy to life in The Maltese Falcon just six years earlier, Astor is far too young for the role) contains a perverse, quasi-incestuous dynamic which has Fritzi constantly referring to her daughter as “baby” and kissing her on the mouth. Indeed, the film’s only straightforward character is Lancaster’s, which, of course, means he’s also the least memorable.