Desert Fury

Barbara Stanwyck must have been busy, so Hollywood asked Mary Astor to play the hardened "casino" owner trying to protect her daughter from her past mistakes in Desert Fury. Lizbeth Scott is the daughter with bad judgement and a rebellious nature, and she quickly falls for the one man her mother forbids: John Hodiak. John is a gangster and clearly bad news, but Lizbeth insists on ruining herself for him, even when the uniformed, young, handsome Burt Lancaster is in love with her.

The so-called romance between Lizbeth and John is far less interesting than what could be argued as a romance between John and his faithful sidekick, Wendell Corey. Wendell gets an introducing credit in the movie, and he gets an enormously meaty role for his first foray in front of the camera. A villain with many layers, some of which couldn't be discussed because of the Hays Code, he's very protective over his friend and doesn't approve of Lizbeth's moony eyes.

The best part of Desert Fury is Edith Head's costumes. Every single scene, Lizbeth and Mary are dressed in gorgeous dresses that will have you oo-ing and ahh-ing for the entire running length. Lizbeth is very pretty in this film, and dressing her up in such beautiful costumes only makes it more fun to watch her, even when she's exercising bad judgement.

Back in the forties, when movies touched on matters not yet admissible in "polite" society, they resorted to codes which supposedly floated over the heads of most of the audience while alerting those in the know to just what was up. Probably no film of the decade was so freighted with innuendo as the oddly obscure Desert Fury, set in a small gambling oasis called Chuckawalla somewhere in the California desert. Proprietress of the Purple Sage saloon and casino is the astonishing Mary Astor, in slacks and sporting a cigarette holder; into town drives her handful-of-a-daughter, Lizabeth Scott, looking, in Technicolor, like 20-million bucks. But listen to the dialogue between them, which suggests an older Lesbian and her young, restless companion (one can only wonder if A.I. Bezzerides' original script made this relationship explicit). Even more blatant are John Hodiak as a gangster and Wendell Corey as his insanely jealous torpedo. Add Burt Lancaster as the town sheriff, stir, and sit back. Both Lancaster and (surprisingly) Hodiak fall for Scott. It seems, however, that Hodiak not only has a past with Astor, but had a wife who died under suspicious circumstances. The desert sun heats these ingredients up to a hard boil, with face-slappings aplenty and empurpled exchanges. Don't pass up this hothouse melodrama, chock full of creepily exotic blooms, if it comes your way; it's a remarkable movie.

Desert Fury is directed by Lewis Allen and adapted to screenplay by A.I. Bezzerides and Robert Rossen from the novel Desert Town written by Ramona Stewart. It stars Lizabeth Scott, John Hodiak, Mary Astor, Burt Lancaster and Wendell Corey. Music is by Miklós Rózsa and cinematography by Edward Cronjager and Charles Lang.

My my, what do we have here then? Desert Fury is a sort of collage of film noir and melodramatic shenanigans played out in splendid Technicolor saturation and set in amongst spanking vistas. Plot in short form finds Scott as Paula Haller, a late teenager who has quit school and returned to Chuckawalla in Nevada. There her mother, Fritzi (Astor), runs the town casino and has powerful friends. Coinciding with Paula's arrival is that of Eddie Bendix (Hodiak), a one time Chuckawalla racketeer who left town under a cloud when his wife was killed in an accident. Town copper Tom Hanson (Lancaster) has the hots for Paula, so when Paula gets the hots for Bendix he is not best pleased - and neither is the mighty Fritzi nor Bendix's "live in chum" Johnny Ryan (Corey).

Pic is absolutely pungent with psychosexual tension, where lead character's sexual orientation is purposely murky for devilish story strand dangles. Dialogue is often noirishly brisk, ripe with innuendo, all as dark secrets and past revelations boil over into glorious character histrionics. Though the powder keg of frustrated human beings is simple in plot structure here, these characters are rather fascinating, there's quite a bit going on beneath the catty and machismo veneers. Past mistakes and missed opportunities hang heavy, the search for more in life also. The reoccurring theme of the bridge that book ends the story is a structure that is either impossible to cross to freedom, or conversely a route back to the safe haven of Chuckawalla. Road to nowhere?

It's not a great movie exactly, it has evident flaws for sure. Hodiak is a touch unconvincing as a heavy mob like dude, a bit too by the numbers, which is a shame because he was often great in noir styled pics (see Somewhere in the Night for example). Now I don't have a problem with Scott, a poor woman's Lauren Bacall she may well be, but some of the scorn she receives is unfair. She's hard to accept as a late teenager here though, especially with her husky voice and delivery of ripe lines belying her supposed youthfulness. Lancaster was at the start of his film career and is utterly wasted, which when it comes alongside his work at this time in The Killers and Brute Force is even more unforgivable. But to offset the acting missteps there's Mary and Wendell...

Astor is on fire, playing a battle axe domineering mother with obvious sexual kinks and life hang-ups, she is both moving and edgily scary. Yet even she is trumped by Corey, in what is his film debut he brings Johnny Ryan to vivid life. Ryan is a ball of man love fire, with a clinical jealousy simmering away, you just know he has it in him to kill should the need arise. Lewis Allen rightly has a mixed reputation, and his bad trait of sinking into melodrama when not required is evident here, but he brings out frothy turns from his principal players. Two excellent cinematographers on show here, both Cronjager (I Wake Up Screaming) and Lang (The Big Heat) delight in using the Technicolor for snazzy sheen value, while the locales in their hands are a sight for sore eyes. Rózsa has done better compositions in his sleep, but his searing strings fit the tone of plotting superbly.

I loved this, in the way I love Johnny Guitar and Slightly Scarlet. Hardly a genius piece of work or a pic that everyone simply must see, but for those who like noir, Westerns or mellers with bends and kinks, then this you should enjoy. 7.5/10

Although Desert Fury was the first film actually released under his studio of Paramount, Burt Lancaster had already made quite a splash for himself in The Killers and Brute Force. In this one he's third billed behind John Hodiak and Lizabeth Scott and all he really does here is flash the pearly whites and be a stalwart hero as a deputy sheriff.

John Hodiak is a notorious gambler/racketeer has come home to Chuckawalla, Nevada where the Queen of the town Mary Astor with her casino runs the place. Hodiak left the place under a cloud with the death of his wife in an automobile accident which looked suspicious, but no one can prove anything.

Astor's daughter Lizabeth Scott who just quit yet another school is intrigued with Hodiak, but everyone's against the pairing, Astor, Lancaster who has a thing for Scott himself, and Hodiak's sidekick and gunsill Wendell Corey who has a most interesting and quite gay relationship with Hodiak.

Desert Fury is one of those several films from the studio days where gay was strictly taboo yet it somehow got to the screen. That scene where Corey tells Scott how he met a ragged and hungry Hodiak at the Automat and bought him a meal and took him home sure sounded like a pickup to me. Many from the generation before Stonewall told me that the Horn&Hardart Automat was one of the great pickup places in New York. Romances and flings have started in stranger places. No way that the writers would not have known that. Corey's devotion to Hodiak can't be explained any other way as the story unfolds. In fact he's the stronger of the two.

Corey and Mary Astor walk off with the acting honors. Astor covers a lot of the story's defects with a bravura performance that Bette Davis or Barbara Stanwyck would envy.

Desert Fury neither helped or hurt the rising career of Burt Lancaster, but he's far from the center of this story.

The main town used in this movie is Cottonwood AZ, I know because I live here. My husbands family are pioneers of Sedona and the Verde Vally area. Cottonwood is about bout 5 minutes from where the bridge scene was used at (Tuziegoot)filming was actually at lower Clarkdale area by the Verde River. The Jail, Drugstore, main street, Purple Sage(was Rusty's Bar in old town Cottonwood, in fact Rusty changed the name of his bar to the Purple sage after that movie was filmed there). Scenes of the ranch and out on the roads are at West Sedona, and Big Park by Sedona. We also have a street named Chuckawalla because of this movie. It's really amazing to see what it looked like compared to now days. They give historical tours in old town and Desert Fury is on their pamphlet. It was a big bootlegging town in the prohibition days that made it so popular. Cottonwood was called "the biggest little city in Arizona".