SparkMore n my opinion it was a great movie with some interesting elements, even though having some plot holes and the ending probably was just too messy and crammed together, but still fun to watch and not your casual movie that is similar to all other ones.

Fairaher The film makes a home in your brain and the only cure is to see it again.

Roy Hart If you're interested in the topic at hand, you should just watch it and judge yourself because the reviews have gone very biased by people that didn't even watch it and just hate (or love) the creator. I liked it, it was well written, narrated, and directed and it was about a topic that interests me.

Brennan Camacho Mostly, the movie is committed to the value of a good time.

mark.waltz Film Noir and Technicolor have never really mixed well, so in the few of them made, the plot has needed to be extra colorful in order to make it work. For Paramount's "Desert Fury", the color isn't a metaphor for the lives of the characters here, but definitely a contrast to it. The film could also be considered an update of George Bernard Shaw's "Mrs. Warren's Profession" where a seemingly devoted mother is actually a madame, and the daughter (here played by Lizabeth Scott) is a seemingly sweet young socialite. But Scott, like her mother (Mary Astor), is attracted to the dangerous, and for her, that is gambler John Hodiak, whose right-hand man (Wendell Corey) is a bit too "devoted" to his boss.A young Burt Lancaster is cast against his normal type as the local lawman, patiently in love with Scott while out to get the goods on Hodiak. Tension arises as the possessive Astor has her own designs on Hodiak (not to mention a slight mustache, accentuated by the color photography and really obvious in a big screen revival of this which I saw) and Corey gets more possessive of his employer. Astor's showy part (her best since "The Maltese Falcon") outshines the others, although Scott's sultriness in this role makes her unforgettable as well. The truth of the matter is that Ms. Astor and Ms. Scott do not at all seem like mother and daughter, as if Lizabeth's character was actually one of Astor's "girls" rather than her own. The Arizona desert is even more impressive in color and is a unique feature to make this must-see film noir, even if it is filled with flaws.

rafael105 This is one of the great crypto-gay B movies of its day. If you take the ridiculous story line at all seriously, it couldn't rate more than a 4. But, if you scratch the almost non-existent veneer, it's definitely worth a 7 for its ability to sustain the ambiguous sexuality of the plot for the full 90 minutes. Can a good girl who knows she likes it bad be happy with bisexuality and incest? Or will censorship and patriarchy force her into submission? It's a festival of bitch slapping, double entendres, guns as phallic symbols and a pigskin glove. Plus, Mary Astor is great as the hard-nosed old gal who talks straight and steers queer. I wish they still made them like this. Kind of makes you miss the days when they had to really work overtime to make gay films.

pnorris I wanted to watch this film because the idea of a film noir in color that works always intrigues me….especially one with Burt Lancaster, Lizabeth Scott & Mary Astor…..unfortunately, it doesn't work here….which, for me, leaves "Chinatown" as the only color noir that's true to the genre….Desert Fury is not really film noir- more like a melodramatic soap opera with a very soap opera score by Miklós Rózsa…..and terrible 'soap opera' over-acting with the exception of Lancaster….add in a thin storyline and poor editing, leaving only the above average cinematography (great desert landscapes) to appreciate…..Plus it always cracks me up when characters in any movie of any era meet each other, kiss a couple of times and all of a sudden they're 'in love' with each other…and the storybook ending where the bad guys die and the couple walks off into the sunrise together is not remotely film noir…..for the real stuff, watch "Out of the Past", "The Killers", "Double Indemnity" or the "Asphalt Jungle"…..

bmacv 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.