Tuesday's Forgotten Films: Desert Fury

This decent enough 1947 desert film noir stars Lizabeth Scott, John Hodiak, Burt Lancaster, Mary Astor, and introduces Wendell Corey. Hodiak plays a sleazy, slick gambler down from Vegas with his partner Corey. The blonde Scott shows up in town and stays with her mother Astor who runs the local gambling den called The Purple Sage. Lancaster plays the local lawman who has eyes for Scott. The trouble comes when Hodiak does, too. The film is shot in color, and the desert setting looks stunning. I wondered how it would look in the traditional black and white. Corey and Hodiak play convincing enough thugs, and Lancaster does okay in his tough guy role. A.I. Bezzerides and Robert Rossen wrote the script, so the dialogue is expectedly quick and snappy. That works fine for the male actors, but doesn't sound as natural for Scott and her mother Astor speaking. Or it didn't to my ear anyway. IMDb.com rates Desert Fury as 6.7/10.0. I probably wouldn't grade it any higher than that.