kapelusznik18 ****SPOILERS****It's when both not still out of her teens 19 year old Paula Haller played by 25 year old and looking much older actress Lizabeth Scott meets by the rickety old bridge gambler Eddie Bendix, John Hodiak,sparks start to fly in all the wrong directions. It seems that young Paula is a dead ringer for Eddie's late wife Angela who was killed in an accident two years ago at that very same bridge when her car was forced off the road! And the person responsible for that tragedy was Eddie Bendix himself! We get to see Paula's mom Fritzi, Mary Astor, who runs the town of Chuckwalla Nevada's casino furious at the sight of her daughter being in town instead of collage which she had dropped out of.This leads to tension between mother & daughter that in the end erupts to a fever pitch.With the now in love with Paula Eddie eloping with Paula to Las Vages that in fact ends , to everyone in the cast, in disaster.To round things out there's former rodeo rider now deputy sheriff "Handsom Tom" Hanson, Burt Lancaster, who's got his eye on Paula as well as his suspicions about Eddie whom he feels drove his wife Angela off the road two years ago killing her. It's in fact Eddie's friend Johnny who pulling the strings in all this which by manipulating the confused, about his sexuality, Eddie to stay with him at all costs and not get involved with anyone, man or woman, else. It was Johnny who had Eddie kill his wife by forcing her off the road and now plans to have him do the same thing with Paula! That in order for him-very possibly a closet gay-to have Eddie all to himself!***SPOILERS*** Strange for a movie in 1947 to have all these hidden subplots that at the time confused many of those in the audience watching it. It was Eddie break with Johnny that lead to the eruption of violence that happened at the end of the movie. Johnny got gunned down by Eddie and he later shared the very same fate that his wife did which opened the door for "Handsom Tom" Hanson to walk off into the sunset with Paula who realized that he , not Eddie, was the man for her!

bkoganbing 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.

colette95 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".

Neil Doyle Probably the most distinguished feature of DESERT FURY is the spectacular Technicolor Paramount lavished on it, a story of personal conflicts among Nevada's gambling set. Another distinguished feature is MARY ASTOR as Fritzi, a hard-boiled dame who runs a gambling establishment and keeps a tight leash on her willful daughter (LIZABETH SCOTT). Scott is strikingly photographed and reminded me of a more animated version of Veronica Lake.But complications arise when two men pay too much attention to Astor's daughter--JOHN HODIAK (a no good hunk who may or may not have murdered his wife) and BURT LANCASTER as a wary police officer who keeps Lizabeth Scott on his radar at all times.It's fun as melodrama, nothing more or less, and at times achieves something of a camp classic with Astor's butch performance as she effortlessly steals the film's acting honors. Take it or leave it, it's all in good, steamy fun with lots of fury going on under those hot Technicolor lights.