Heat Lightning (1934)

Heat Lightning is a 1934 melodrama from Warner Brothers. It’s the sort of material that a few years later might have been given more of a noir treatment but it actually works just fine as it is.

Olga (Aline MacMahon) and her kid sister Myra (Ann Dvorak) run a gas station, lunch counter and fleabag motel in the middle of the Mojave Desert. Olga is in charge and she also acts as mechanic.

Olga takes life pretty seriously. She seems to be trying very hard to repress her femininity, and her emotions.

She is very protective, perhaps over-protective, of her sister. She is particularly concerned to keep Myra away from Steve Laird and in this case she may be right. He does apparently have quite a bad boy reputation where the ladies are concerned.

Olga wants to protect Myra from men. It isn’t hard to figure out that Olga has had plenty of experience with men, not all of it good. She’s clearly a woman with a past.

Suddenly it seems like everybody is heading for Olga’s gas station. You’d wonder how such an isolated gas station could get so many customers, but then for anyone motoring in these parts there’s just nowhere else to end up.

Some of the customers on this particular day are going to shake the foundation of Olga’s life to the core.

One of these customers is George (Preston Foster). He knew Olga a long time ago, when she was a very different person. He knew her very very well. They were lovers, and one assumes that they were involved together in various activities of dubious legality. George has turned up with Jeff (Lyle Talbot). We soon find out that they have just robbed a bank, and shot a bank guard. This is exactly why Olga now lives in the middle of the Mojave Desert. She wanted to get right away from George.

Staying at the motel overnight are Mrs Tifton (Glenda Farrell) and Mrs Ashton-Ashley (Ruth Donnelly). They’re not exactly respectable ladies. They’re both man-eaters.

The sexual tension between Olga and George just keeps rising. Olga doesn’t want to admit that seeing him still does things to her. There’s also a certain amount of sexual tension between Mrs Tifton and her chauffeur Frank (Frank McHugh). But then there’s always going to be sexual tension when Mrs Tifton is around.

George and Jeff are headed for the Mexican border but George has other things planned before they leave and those other things will precipitate a crisis.

The core of the movie is the relationship between the two sisters. Olga’s over-protectiveness has made Myra man-crazy. She feels totally cut off from life and she has a desperate need for a social life and she is desperate to find a man. Olga fears Myra will make all the mistakes that she made. She’s probably right, but she doesn’t realise that forcing Myra into open rebellion will make things worse.

Olga thinks she has successfully repressed her sexual and emotional longings but all that flies out the window when she sees George again.

It’s a tough role for Aline MacMahon. She has to make Olga sympathetic and that’s not easy. Olga is a very prickly character. She also has to convince us that inside Olga is a mass of conflicting passions and fears. MacMahon does a pretty good job of it.

Ann Dvorak has a fairly tough role as well. Myra’s judgment is disastrously poor but we have to care about her. Dvorak does a fine job as well.

Glenda Farrell is a lot of fun, as usual. Preston Foster as the manipulative George and Lyle Talbot as the easily-led and easily panicked Jeff are both good.

The desert setting works well. Everything about the movie is as overheated as the weather. There’s a bit of humour but it’s used to increase the sense of emotional and sexual tensions building to boiling point.

A fine well-crafted overwrought melodrama and the ending is satisfying. Highly recommended.

The Warner Archive DVD release is barebones but looks good.