The Flaming Urge

Harold Lloyd Jr. Shows up in town, gets a room to stay at Florence Lake's house, and a job at Jonathan Hale's department store. He's worried about keeping his job. He has an irresistible urge to chase fires. He chose this town because it didn't have any fires, but now there's a rash of them, and suspicion falls on him.

Lloyd isn't very good, especially when talking with old pros like Pierre Watkins, whose daughter, Cathy Downs, has a crush on him, store manager Byron Foulger, fire chief Herbert Rawlinson, and Johnny Duncan, who runs the store's stock room, when he isn't singing. They provide most of the interest in this movie, with their images of small-town eccentricity. But someone there is a fire bug. Who can it be?

A gem of a 50s film. The story concerns a mild mannered young man who cannot resist the impulse to chase fire trucks and firemen. In doing so, he risks losing his position as a clerk in a department store. After a few unexplained fires, his fellow townsmen come to believe he is an arsonist. The story was filmed entirely in Michigan and the film's unadorned presentation of small town America circa 1950 is appealing. A dog has a rather prominent part in the film and adds an unusual interest to the story. Harold Lloyd, Jr. is adept in his role and Cathy Downs is an attractive addition. The film is well worth a viewing.

Just finished viewing THE FLAMING URGE, primarily on the basis of the Alpha Home Entertainment cover description of Harold Lloyd, Jr. ("tormented by chronic alcoholism and masochistic homosexual urges"). One of the other reviewers here noted something that I picked up on about halfway through the film--the "flaming urge" is a 1950s code term for homosexuality. The protagonist is a young man, always neatly dressed (highlighted by a colorful bow tie), extremely polite, who must move from town to town because of his uncontrollable urge. He is unfamiliar with the normal male rituals of the period and is pretty much a loner. But everyone seems to know how to cure him - his urges will stop once he's married! An oddly amusing movie overall.

Wow, what an usual subject matter---fire bugs. Never seen a movie dealing w/ this subject before. I liked the innocence of it: the small homey town and some of the friendly caring people in the town, and the un-chain dept. store, and the lakeside picnic, and Robbie the dog---who is also a fire bug and sits atop fire hydrants at the scene of the fires he runs to. It's all so innocent and cute.

This movie uses the pyromaniac urge as an extraordinarily transparent metaphor for homosexuality. While it's really not worth watching strictly on its merits as a film, as part of the history of hidden homosexuality and as an example of a "coded" film (easily translated), it's stupendous.