User Reviews

I rated "The Petrified Forest" 10/10. This is no where as good as that film but it's not a bad film, kind of slow in the beginning, has a more dramatic sense to it. Helmut Dantine plays his part well as Captain Becker. Seemingly cold and calculated but with wont that necessitates his end goal. Philip Dorn as Philip Artveld, in the beginning, comes off sort of cowardly and weak but not stupid. I did like the fact the secondary German characters are used just as much as any other character. Usually in these quickly made sort of films they are just used as background fodder. They do get into long speeches but it is a propaganda film "for the war effort" even if it did come too late in reality.

The character of Gramps is really only memorable based on his incessant talk of how he knew Billy the Kid and his proof is his gun that used to be the Kid's. The problem I had with that is Gramps would have to be at the least 85-90 years old to know him and all the other Western famous people of the late 19th century and he just didn't look that old in this film. The actor who played Gramps, Samuel Hinds, was 69-70 years old when he did this film and frankly he just didn't look old enough. In real life he was 6 years old when Billy the Kid died. I know this is a little nitpick but it's made a part of the story and therefore, based on the character of Gramps, is somewhat important in telling the story.

The added comedy of Hale and Manning's character I found unnecessary especially since Manning has little to do with anything, she is used as background fodder. It should have stayed dramatic with the little bit of comedy done by the character of Gramps which was actually much smoother in delivery. There are some good action scenes such as in the mine and right after when people are coming to buy gas and try to get away when told that the escaped Nazis are there. Then right after that the fight in the car. Usually those scenes drag a bit but in this they seem more realistic and that's always a plus.

The end battle was actually quite exciting with tension, energy, and suspense. It was like watching a hundred men rush in on just three, a bit of an exaggeration but still...

Were there stupid parts? Of course. In 1h 19 min the first half is dramatic, the middle has some unnecessary comedic elements, and the ending is all action. If they added 30 minutes perhaps a little of the dramatic could have played a bigger role but propaganda being propaganda, even little too late propaganda...it is what it is. Still good film to watch.

***SPOILERS*** Remake of "The Petrified Forest" With this time around it's a gang of escaped Nazi POW's not the Duke Mantee bank robbers who create all the mischief and damage in the movie. It's when Dutch freedom fighter now airman in the Royal Dutch Airforce Philip Artveld, Philip Dorn, is mistakenly taken into custody by Gramps, Samuel H. Hinds, while hitching a ride across the Nevada Desert in Gramps thinking, because of his foreign accent, that he's one of the escaped Nazi POW's that things really get interesting in the movie.

Gramps' granddaughter Jean, Jean Sullivan, who works at his almost deserted desert hotel takes a shine to the tall handsome and worldly Dutchman that causes her boyfriend the handyman Hank Albright, Bill Kennedy, to get very angry at him. Philip for his part wants nothing to do with Jean romantically since he senses that she wants him as a ticket out of that dead end job as a maid at the hotel not as a lover.

Knowing that he's not wanted Philip decides to leave and go west to San Francisco to get on his troop ship leaving for the war in the Pacific but is picked up hitchhiking by the escaped Nazi POW's and ends up where he started from the desert hotel with Jane Hank Gramps and Jane's kid brother Danny, Blayney Lewis! The Nazis lead by their fearless leader Capt. Becker, Helmut Bantine, quickly take everyone hostage and plan to uses them as human shields if their ever confronted by the US Army or FBI in their quest to blow up America for their Fuhrer and Nazi German Fatherland which by the time the film was released, on May 1 1945, were just about kaput anyway!

****SPOILERS**** Hard to take war propaganda movie in that with Germany just about out of the war, a week after the film was released, it had really no effect on the American audience watching it! We do get to see a somewhat bizarre comedy act between new found hostages, who's car ran out of gas in the desert, Dr. Orville Tedder, Alan Hale, and his screwy wife Lora, Irene Manning, who keep the audience entertained by extracting Nazi POW Hoffman's, Rudolph Anders, rotten teeth and Lora's hamburger fetish but the good part in the movie is saved for last.

That's when the local ranch-hands and cowboys come to Philip and his fellow hostages rescue that was about the only thing in the movie "Escape in the Desert" that was far better that it's prequel "The Petrified Forest" in that we never got to see, in the Duke Mantee Gange getting caught, because the film-makers ran out of money and it all had to take place off-screen!