On D List of Movie Reviews

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Desert Fury (1947)

Rate: 3
Viewed: 6/24

DFury
6/24: My one hundred bucks says Eddie Bendix and Johnny Ryan were absolutely homosexual lovers.

Judging the way they talked about each other, I have no doubt of it. Take a look at the following dialogue exchange between Johnny and Paula:

"It was in the automat off Times Square, about 2 o'clock in the morning on a Saturday. I was broke. He had a couple of dollars. We got to talking. He ended up paying for my ham and eggs."
"And then?"
"I went home with him that night. I was locked out, didn't have a place to stay. His old lady ran a boarding house in the Bronx. There were a couple of vacant rooms. We were together from then on."

Anyway, Desert Fury is a bad movie because of the lousy, lifeless script that's full of gay undertones. Everybody blabbers to no end, and the mystery keeps dragging its feet for a long time. A lot of effort is spent on Lizabeth Scott's makeup and wardrobe, and her character is nineteen years old? Ha!

I only went for the film because of Burt Lancaster. After seeing I Walk Alone, I thought he and Lizabeth Scott would have another great noir thriller up their sleeve, but nope...not this time. Cast in a worthless supporting role, Burt Lancaster only appears for five, ten minutes max while Lizabeth Scott wastes her time with John Hodiak (who?) and Wendell Corey. Mary Astor sure likes using the cigarette holder a lot, huh? Given how her character kept hinting to Paula not to get on with Eddie Bendix, I thought she was meaning to say that he's her father, hence the potential weirdness of the whole thing.

On the positive side, the cinematography is excellent which is very, very Douglas Sirk-like before his colorful films ever showed up. Desert Fury may appear to have been shot on location (Arizona with some done in California). However, almost the whole thing was deceptively done on a sound stage with an occasional use of rear projection effect. By the way, that's a nice-looking 1946 Chrysler New Yorker Town & Country convertible.

All in all, there's no such thing as neo-noir in Desert Fury but quite a lot of gay subtexts in the most subtle and blatant way possible.