Heat Lightning: Stuck in the Desert with Nowhere to Go

Is this worth the gas money?

Honestly, yes. If you like movies that feel like they were filmed while everyone was nursing a massive headache from the sun, you will love Heat Lightning. It is not for the folks who need a massive plot twist every ten minutes or explosions to keep their eyes glued to the screen. It is quiet. It is prickly. It is definitely for people who prefer their characters slightly unhinged and their settings lonely.

The whole thing takes place at Olga’s gas station, which sits somewhere in the California desert. It feels like the kind of place where the air conditioner hasn’t worked since 1929. Aline MacMahon is the anchor here, and she plays the kind of woman who has seen too much and stopped caring about being polite.

Then these two guys roll in. They are clearly on the run, but they are trying so hard to look like they aren't. It is that specific kind of sweating-through-your-shirt tension that works better than a car chase.

Cinematic perspective: Exploring the visual vocabulary of Heat Lightning (1934) through its definitive frames.

Small things I noticed while watching:

• The way the light hits the back of the set. It looks like it’s actually 105 degrees outside.
• The sound of the flies buzzing. Or maybe it was just my ceiling fan? No, it was definitely in the movie.
• The weird, jagged rhythm of the dialogue. Nobody talks like a normal human, but somehow it feels more real than a Sorkin script.
• There is a moment where a car pulls up and you can see the dust kicking up for way longer than necessary. I loved that.

It is not a perfect film. Sometimes the supporting cast feels like they wandered in from a Mamma's Boy outtake, which is jarring. And the ending? It just kind of stops. It doesn't wrap things up with a nice little bow, which is exactly why it stuck with me.

There is this one scene by the gas pump where the two fugitives are trying to fix their radiator, and it lasts for an eternity. The silence is heavy. It reminded me a bit of the suffocating, trapped energy in The Cheat, though they are totally different beasts. You just want them to leave or get caught, but the movie just lets them sit there in the heat.

I am not sure if it’s a masterpiece. Probably not. But it’s got this weird, sticky atmosphere that you just can't shake off once the credits roll. 🌵