It is amazing how some poverty row productions have coherent scripts with quite a few interesting aspects which lifts them above the average fare (always provided you are interested in movies of this epoch). There is quite a lot going on during the short 63 Minutes this movie will take of your time.
The heroine - a very wholesome looking Jean Parker is the daughter of the owner of a small café and gas station in the middle of the desert. Her father is involved (he operates an illegal stash of tires) with a gangster who retreated here from the East and opened a night club in the desert. It is a strange mixture of a Corleone-kind of figure and Edward Robinson's Johnny Rocco in Key Largo.
The girl has to choose between the gangster and her former boyfriend who has just joined the army. The gangster knows that because of injuries which date from shootouts he will not live much longer and tries to use this as an argument for the hesitant girl to marry him. He is in trouble because some competing local gangsters (all wearing ten gallon hats) want to run him out of the place (this is also slightly reminiscent of Godfather II).
The army officer boyfriend has a showdown with the gangster. He enters his snazzy office in the night club, looks around, nods in confirmation and says: This looks like Berchtesgaden, you know, where Hitler chews rugs. After this rather surprising opening he goes on to tell the gangster that he, like Hitler, will soon be a has-been and that there will be no place for guys like him in the country. It's a little like Bogart's speech in Key Largo.
Oh yes, and the girl's poor father is forced by the gangster to bury a corpse in the desert. Like I said, quite a lot is going on and everything ties in nicely in the story, which is not too often the case in today's A-productions. Edgar G. Ulmer as always succeeds to create an atmosphere which helps the story along and makes this movie worth your while.
The heroine - a very wholesome looking Jean Parker is the daughter of the owner of a small café and gas station in the middle of the desert. Her father is involved (he operates an illegal stash of tires) with a gangster who retreated here from the East and opened a night club in the desert. It is a strange mixture of a Corleone-kind of figure and Edward Robinson's Johnny Rocco in Key Largo.
The girl has to choose between the gangster and her former boyfriend who has just joined the army. The gangster knows that because of injuries which date from shootouts he will not live much longer and tries to use this as an argument for the hesitant girl to marry him. He is in trouble because some competing local gangsters (all wearing ten gallon hats) want to run him out of the place (this is also slightly reminiscent of Godfather II).
The army officer boyfriend has a showdown with the gangster. He enters his snazzy office in the night club, looks around, nods in confirmation and says: This looks like Berchtesgaden, you know, where Hitler chews rugs. After this rather surprising opening he goes on to tell the gangster that he, like Hitler, will soon be a has-been and that there will be no place for guys like him in the country. It's a little like Bogart's speech in Key Largo.
Oh yes, and the girl's poor father is forced by the gangster to bury a corpse in the desert. Like I said, quite a lot is going on and everything ties in nicely in the story, which is not too often the case in today's A-productions. Edgar G. Ulmer as always succeeds to create an atmosphere which helps the story along and makes this movie worth your while.