Come for the super saturated TechniColor & round-shouldered late ‘40s cars; stay for the OTT melodrama & gender-blind psycho-sexual love triangles in this modern film noir Western. Whatever producer Hal Wallis & scripter Robert Rossen were shooting for, they sure as hell weren’t shooting blanks. Returning home early from finishing school, Lizabeth Scott hasn’t even said hello to hardened casino proprietress mom Mary Astor before she’s started playing straight-arrow town sheriff Burt Lancaster against crooked racketeer/man-with-a-past John Hodiak. What does she care about rumors on the long unexplained death of Hodiak's first wife? She’s too resentful of Mom’s romantic manipulations to notice. You’d think Astor was jealous of her 19-yr-old daughter. And Mom’s not the only jealous character around. There’s Hodiak’s longtime sideman Wendell Corey (in his debut pic), so possessive of his boss, as if he’s trying to break up any serious new romantic relationship. It goes back to when Corey first spotted a broke/lonely Hodiak at a Times Square automat, paid for his ham & eggs at two a.m., then took him back to his place for the night. Yikes! Even for 1947, this isn’t gay subtext, it’s gay pickup action. Directed in regrettably faceless fashion by Lewis Allen, the story begs for the late ‘50s stylings of Minnelli or Douglas Sirk. But Lancaster, freshly contracted by Wallis at Paramount after two tough-guy leads at Universal for Mark Hellinger, calls on his blistering physical charisma to pull it all together even as he plays straight man (in so many ways) to all the craziness. Ridiculous & astounding in equal measure, this fever dream of a film might prove too much on the big screen (a fest of ‘bad’ laughs), but can get inside your head in a one-on-one viewing.
ATTENTION MUST BE PAID: Third-billed when first released, Burt moves to top position on the re-release trailer included on an excellent Kino-Lorber DVD. And check out the 3-strip TechniColor resolution on Scott’s intro close-up . . . to say nothing of the wood-paneled gloss of her sporty sedan.
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