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Desert Fury

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Genre
  
Crime, Drama, Film-Noir

Duration
  

Language
  
English

6.7/10
IMDb

Director
  
Lewis Allen

Music director
  
Miklos Rozsa

Country
  
United States

Desert Fury movie poster

Release date
  
August 15, 1947 (1947-08-15) (United States)

Based on
  
the novel Desert Town  by Ramona Stewart

Writer
  
Robert Rossen (screenplay), Ramona Stewart (novel)

Directors
  
Lewis Allen, Abel Meeropol

Screenplay
  
Robert Rossen, A. I. Bezzerides

Cast
  
John Hodiak
(Eddie Bendix),
Lizabeth Scott
(Paula Haller),
Burt Lancaster
(Tom Hanson),
Wendell Corey
(Johnny Ryan),
Mary Astor
(Fritzi Haller),
Kristine Miller
(Claire Lindquist)

Similar movies
  
Wild Card
,
The Big Sleep
,
Runner Runner
,
Dr. No
,
The Gambler
,
Detour

Desert Fury is a 1947 American crime film noir directed by Lewis Allen starring Lizabeth Scott, John Hodiak and Burt Lancaster, with Mary Astor and Wendell Corey.

Contents

Desert Fury movie scenes

The story was adapted for the screen by A.I. Bezzerides and Robert Rossen, based on the racy novel Desert Town by Ramona Stewart. The picture was produced by Hal Wallis, with music by Miklós Rózsa and cinematography in Technicolor by Charles Lang.

Desert Fury wwwgstaticcomtvthumbmovieposters36774p36774

The movie is now owned by Universal. It is unavailable on DVD or Blu-Ray in the U.S. film noir enthusiasts are campaigning to have the film restored, preserved, and released on Blu-Ray in the coming year.

Desert Fury Desert Fury

Plot

Desert Fury The Girl with the White Parasol Movie Review Desert Fury

Fritzi Haller (Mary Astor) is the tough owner of a saloon and casino in the small fictional mining town of Chuckawalla, Nevada. Her daughter, Paula Haller (Lizabeth Scott), has just quit school and returned home at the same time that gangster Eddie Bendix (John Hodiak) has returned. He was once involved with Fritzi, but left town under suspicion of murdering his wife.

Desert Fury Desert Fury 1947 Film Noir of the Week

Paula falls for Bendix and they become involved. Paula's old boyfriend, and local lawman, Tom Hanson (Burt Lancaster), along with Bendix's sidekick, Johnny Ryan (Wendell Corey), try to break up the relationship. When Fritzi finds out, she angrily tries to protect Paula and put a stop to her seeing Bendix.

Desert Fury DESERT FURY

Bendix's past catches up with him in an unexpected way when the car he is in, running from Hanson (who wants to rid the town of the likes of Bendix and Ryan), crashes through the railing as it is going onto the bridge and plunges down the embankment, killing him.

Cast

Desert Fury The Girl with the White Parasol Movie Review Desert Fury

  • Lizabeth Scott as Paula Haller
  • John Hodiak as Eddie Bendix
  • Burt Lancaster as Tom Hanson
  • Mary Astor as Fritzi Haller
  • Wendell Corey as Johnny Ryan
  • Kristine Miller as Claire Lindquist
  • William Harrigan as Judge Berle Lindquist
  • James Flavin as Sheriff Pat Johnson
  • Jane Novak as Mrs. Lindquist
  • Anna Camargo as Rosa
  • Production

    Desert Fury Desert Fury 1947

    Scenes were shot on location in the small Ventura County, California, town of Piru, with the northwest side of Center Street, at Main, used as the exterior of Fritzi's saloon and casino; the Piru Mansion was used as the Haller home and the historic Piru bridge was used as the locale of the car crash. Some scenes were also shot in Clarkdale, Arizona.

    Some outside shots were filmed on the Old Town section of Cottonwood, Arizona.

    Critical response

    When the film was released, The New York Times roundly despised it. They wrote, "Desert Fury is a beaut - a beaut of a Technicolored mistake from beginning to end. If this costly Western in modern dress had been made by a lesser producer than Hal Wallis it could be dismissed in a sentence. But Mr. Wallis is a man with a considerable reputation, being a two-time winner of the Irving Thalberg Award of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, and Desert Fury is such an incredibly bad picture in all respects save one, and that is photographically."

    In later years the film has been praised as a seminal and unique Hollywood melodrama due to its bold overtones of homosexuality:

    Film scholar Foster Hirsch wrote, "In a truly subversive move the film jettisons the characters' criminal activities to concentrate on two homosexual couples: the mannish mother who treats her daughter like a lover, and the gangster and his devoted possessive sidekick. (...) Desert Fury is shot in the lurid, over-saturated colors that would come to define the 1950s melodramas of Douglas Sirk."

    Film noir expert Eddie Muller wrote, "Desert Fury is the gayest movie ever produced in Hollywood's golden era. The film is saturated - with incredibly lush color, fast and furious dialogue dripping with innuendo, double entendres, dark secrets, outraged face-slappings, overwrought Miklos Rosza violins. How has this film escaped revival or cult status? It's Hollywood at its most gloriously berserk."

    References

    Desert Fury Wikipedia
    Desert Fury IMDbDesert Fury Rotten TomatoesDesert Fury themoviedb.org