Heat Lightning

The setting: a gas station in the middle of a sweltering, desiccated nowhere. The women: Olga (Aline MacMahon), a wary, weathered loner with a knack for fixing cars, and Myra (Ann Dvorak), her pretty kid sister who dishes up diner chow and dreams of romance. The film: Heat Lightning, an edgy, femme prenoir that turns incendiary when visitors arrive -- two bejeweled divorcees and Olga's old love, a killer on the lam. Guiding a cast that also includes Preston Foster, Lyle Talbot, Glenda Farrell, Ruth Donnelly, Frank McHugh and Jane Darwell, Mervyn LeRoy (I Am a Fugitive from a Chain Gang) ramps up pre-Code wisecracking and vise-like tension into an emotional wallop of an ending.

• drama