Taraparain
Tells a fascinating and unsettling true story, and does so well, without pretending to have all the answers.
Ogosmith
Each character in this movie — down to the smallest one — is an individual rather than a type, prone to spontaneous changes of mood and sometimes amusing outbursts of pettiness or ill humor.
Humaira Grant
It’s not bad or unwatchable but despite the amplitude of the spectacle, the end result is underwhelming.
MartinHafer
Lonnie (Ken Scott) just got out of prison for vehicular homicide. The problem is that through the course of the movie you realize that he didn't do it but took the rap for his girlfriend, Melinda (Martha Hyer). But when Lonnie gets into town, he learns that Melinda is married and she didn't wait for him! Nice girl, huh? Well, through the course of the film you come to realize that she's actually much, much worse!This film definitely pushed the envelope back in 1960...deliberately so. The fim begins with a scene where you THINK you see someone skinny dipping and the story is filled with sleazy elements and some cursing as well as the word 'rape'....somewhat tame by modern standards but certainly not for 1960!So is it worth seeing? Well, the acting quality is very good and it's a well made film. Whether or not you will like it will depend a lot on whether or not you like sleazy soap operas. I enjoyed it.
By the way, this film has some very strange billing. Although Kent Scott clearly plays the leading character in the film, he gets fourth billing. And, although Joan Bennett received third billing, she's barely in the film.
JohnHowardReid
Brett Halsey won a Golden Globe Award for Most Promising Newcomer? He'd already made at least sixty or seventy movie and TV appearances! How many movies do you have to make before you're NOT classified as a newcomer? Five hundred and twelve maybe?Obviously adapted from some melodramatic dime-store pot-boiler, this cliché-ridden tale of the new/old South is handled perfectly straight by director and actors alike. Though the story carries sufficient impetus to keep one reasonably entertained, its audience potential is limited.Production values are adequate, with some effective location photography, and the casting of Martha Hyer as the femme fatale is a decided asset.
David (Handlinghandel)
Heavy-breathing and faux-Southern, though shot, we are told at the end, in authentic Louisiana locations. We have incest here, folks, or hints of it. (That would be patriarch Raymond Burr and his daughter Martha Hyer.) We have nymphomania (Hyer.) We have boozing and fighting.We have insanity in the form of Burrr's wife, played by Joan Bennett. (She looks great here -- much better than a decade earlier in the very different and far better "Father of the Bride.) The movie opens with a birthday party for her little boy. The problem is, the party is taking place at his grave. He's been dead six years or so.The man sent up for killing him while driving drunk is Hyer's ex-boyfriend. She's married now -- and to a doctor, no less.It isn't believable. But it's never dull. And there's much to be said for an entertaining movie, no matter how silly it is at its core.
blanche-2
Released in 1960, Desire in the Dust looks to have been a B movie, featuring a lot of TV actors and future TV actors: Raymond Burr, Anne Helm, Jack Ging, Edward Binns, Martha Hyer, and Brett Halsey. The film also looks to be attempting to cash in on the success of those southern Big Daddy dramas like Cat on a Hot Tin Roof and The Long Hot Summer.The Big Daddy in this one is Raymond Burr, who tightly controls a family that includes his off-her-rocker wife, played by Joan Bennett, stunningly beautiful daughter Hyer, her wimpy doctor husband, Brett Halsey, and son, Jack Ging. Bennnett never recovered from the death of a young son who was hit by a car six years earlier; Ging is love with the white trash daughter of the man who supposedly ran him over.Of course, there's a lot more to the story than that and in 102 minutes, this film stuffs it all in, including more cigarettes and alcohol than one would see in ten films put together. There are also a lot of bullets, dust, and histrionics.All in all, it's a slow go, with a couple of interesting segments and decent acting.
