***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!
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!