Inferno **** (1953, Robert Ryan, William Lundigan, Rhonda Fleming) – Classic Movie Review 5185

Director Roy Ward Baker’s taut and suspenseful 1953 thriller Inferno is notable as 20th Century Fox’s first, successful, if belated, move into making the then popular 3D movies.

It stars Rhonda Fleming as scheming wife Geraldine Carson and William Lundigan as her greedy businessman lover Joseph Duncan, who scheme to kill her rich man-about-town husband, alcoholic millionaire Donald Whitley Carson III (Robert Ryan), by leaving him to die in the desert with a broken leg after saying they are setting off for the rescue services.

Fleming’s heartless character is oblivious to Ryan’s cries of ‘help me Rhonda’, but Ryan finds a way to live and set out for revenge. Ryan’s riveting performance, the fine outdoors location filming in the Mojave Desert, with imaginatively, well-used 3D, Lucien Ballard’s striking Technicolor cinematography and the thrilling desert locale balance the slightly less exciting turns from Fleming and Lundigan and the story’s rather disappointing finish. Fleming does look quite something, though, in Technicolor, and makes a fine villainess.

Also in the cast are Henry Hull, Carl Betz as Lieutenant Mike Platt, Larry Keating, Robert Burton as the Sheriff, Everett Glass, Adrienne Marden, Barbara Pepper, Dan White, Henry Carter and Robert Adler. It is written by Francis M Cockrell.

The Mojave Desert location was covered in snow and Fleming developed pneumonia.

It is now digitally restored in 3D and was shown in digital 3D in a double bill with Man in the Dark (1953) in the Noir City Film Festival at the Castro Theater in San Francisco on 1 February 2013.

It was remade as Ordeal (1973) with Arthur Hill in the Robert Ryan part and Diana Muldaur and James Stacy as the villains.

20th Century Fox followed it with its 3D film Gorilla at Large (1954).

It is the first of Rhonda Fleming’s three films in 3D, which she followed with Those Redheads From Seattle with Gene Barry, for Pine-Thomas Productions, and Jivaro in 1954 with Fernando Lamas.

© Derek Winnert 2017 Classic Movie Review 5185

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