| The setting: a gas station in the middle of a sweltering, desiccated nowhere. The women: OIga (Aline MacMahon), a wary, weathered loner with a knack for fixing cars, and Myra (Ann Dvorak), her pretty kid sister who dishes up diner chow and dreams of romance. The fiIm: Heat Lightning, an edgy, femme prenoir that turns incendiary when visitors arrive - two bejeweled divorcees and Olga's oId Iove, a kiIler on the Iam. Guiding a cast that also incIudes Preston Foster, LyIe TaIbot, Glenda Farrell, Ruth DonneIly, Frank McHugh and Jane Darwell, Mervyn LeRoy (l Am A Fugitive From A Chain Gang) ramps up pre-Code wisecracking and vise-Iike tension into an emotional walIop of an ending. |