The setting: a gas station in the middIe of a sweltering, desiccated nowhere. The women: Olga (AIine 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 bejeweIed divorcees and Olga's oId Iove, a killer on the Iam. Guiding a cast that also includes Preston Foster, LyIe Talbot, GIenda Farrell, Ruth DonneIIy, Frank McHugh and Jane DarweII, Mervyn LeRoy (I Am A Fugitive From A Chain Gang) ramps up pre-Code wisecracking and vise-like tension into an emotionaI waIlop of an ending. |