Heat Lightning (1934)

Great visuals, story delivers no surprises

Don't listen to the Hype. It's awful

The film may be flawed, but its message is not.

By the time the dramatic fireworks start popping off, each one feels earned.

In many ways, this film reminds me of another Warner Brothers film made just a few years later, "The Petrified Forest". Both are set at isolated gas stations in the desert and both involve gangsters who come there to seek shelter. However, the films are certainly different enough to make it worth seeing them both.Olga (Aline MacMahon) is a world-weary soul who has chosen to move into the middle of nowhere because she's tired of people. Her sister, Myrna (Ann Dvorak), however, isn't tired of people and yearns for excitement and men-- and the pair couldn't be more different. Into their very dull and predictable lives come an assortment of folks to stay at their gas station/motor court. One pair are a couple of divorcées on their way from Reno after their latest conquest. Another are a pair of crooks on the run from the law. In a coincidence you'll only see in a play or movie, it turns out the boss (Preston Foster) was once Olga's lover! What's next? See the film.There are two main things going for this film--Foster and MacMahon. Their characters are interesting and the final scene between them is something to see! Unfortunately, Dvorak's role is very whiny and annoying--and the character significantly impairs the film with her overwrought performance. Overall, it is worth seeing but is far from brilliant work from the studio.

...the answer is NO!! There wasn't much heat lightning going on in this movie either!! Ann Dvorak had been one of the most exciting new talents to emerge in the early thirties but her rebellious attitude with studio heads made sure her talent was kept under a rock and her role as Myra in this film was a part any contract actress could have played. It was just another nail in the coffin of Ann's once promising career. It was up to good old Aline MacMahon to give some vitality to her role as Olga, the older sister, who has managed to keep her passions hidden for many years.This movie appears more like a very watered down version of "The Petrified Forest" without the psychological undertones and the powerhouse performance of Humphrey Bogart. Preston Foster had shown he could give dynamic performances (his Killer Meares in "The Last Mile") but unfortunately not in this movie. Olga and Myra run a road side diner 1,000 miles from anywhere, smart and efficient Olga servicing the cars, Myra yearning to get away. Poor Ann spends most of the movie with her head in her arms. For a service station, stuck in the middle of nowhere, it does a brisk trade, there is a bickering older couple, two would be starlets (lively Muriel Evans is billed as a blonde cutie), two freshly divorced gals on their way back from Reno (Glenda Farrell and Ruth Donnelly) and Jerry (Preston Foster) and his jittery sidekick (Lyle Talbot) on the run from a bank holdup. Jerry knows Olga from years before, he is the man she is trying to forget. When he overhears Mrs. Tifton (Farrell) discussing her jewelry he decides to play on Olga's pent up emotions - and have his friend rob the divorcée, but plans are changed when the women decide to put the jewelry in the safe. Not only does Olga realise she has been played for a fool but Myra comes home from the party that she had been forbidden to go to a bit the worse for wear.For all the "action" (and I use the term loosely) the movie doesn't seem to go anywhere but amazingly Aline MacMahon gets a part she can really sink her teeth into. Her Olga is no nonsense and all business but when her past catches up with her she displays vulnerability and longing in a very real way!!! There was no one like Aline!!!

Heat Lightning was an early work by George Abbott, written and directed by him in 1933 it had only a run of 44 performances in that anemic Depression Era season on Broadway. It was not the best work Abbott was ever associated with, but I'm sure he was grateful that Warner Brothers bought the screen rights in those cash strapped times.It stars Aline McMahon and Ann Dvorak as a pair of sisters running a filling station, automobile camp out in the American west, very similar to the one Bette Davis and her family was running in The Petrified Forest. They're both a bit antsy being stuck out in the desert without the attention of the male of the species. But McMahon's been around the track a little too often and she tries to steer Dvorak right.The guy who gave her that ride a few times is Preston Foster and he's shown up with pal Lyle Talbot. On the lam as it turns out, but the sisters don't know it. Foster's putting the moves on Dvorak and McMahon ain't having any of that. Truth be told she's got a bit of a yen still left and the desert isolation ain't curing the yen.Some other characters pop up in this drama, a pair of would be divorcées heading for Reno with their 'chauffeur' played by Glenda Farrell, Ruth Donnelly and Frank McHugh. Also at the beginning Edgar Kennedy and Jane Darwell are a married couple going west. I wish we could have seen more of them. In fact I'm surprised that Jack Warner didn't recognize a good potential comic team there and made more films with them.As you can see there are a lot of similarities to The Petrified Forest, but I think that even with the tragedies that befall both Humphrey Bogart and Leslie Howard there, The Petrified Forest is a more optimistic play. Bette Davis does get her chance to leave and see the wider world. Not quite what happens here, but I can't say more.As compared to some of the legendary work George Abbott was associated with on stage Heat Lightning is definitely minor league. Yet it's not a bad piece of work, definitely in keeping with the times. Mervyn LeRoy did a good job in filling the screen and striking a nice balance between the comic and the dramatic. Very typical of what came from the working man's studio.

If you can get over the unlikely pairing of ALINE MacMAHON and PRESTON FOSTER as former lovers and stand the desert heat at a motor court stranded in the middle of nowhere, you may be able to accept some of the melodramatics of HEAT LIGHTNING.Nevertheless, I have to agree with The N.Y. Times when it summed it up as: "Drab melodrama with occasional flashes of forced comedy." The forced comedy is supplied by RUTH DONNELLY and GLENDA FARRELL as two rich dames being chauffeured by FRANK McHUGH, and in an early scene, JANE DARWELL and EDGAR KENNEDY as a bickering married couple who stop by for car repair and a coke. Otherwise, it's pretty dreary stuff, with Foster trying to con McMahon and her sister (ANN DVORAK) out of some money in their safe.The downbeat ending only emphasizes the dreariness of the plot which seems to go nowhere fast.