Shot in 3-D (Three Dimension) and Technicolor, this experimental effort from 20th Century Fox, directed by Roy Baker and starring Robert Ryan as millionaire Donald Carson, Rhonda Fleming as his scheming wife, Geraldine, and William Lundigan as her lover, Joseph Duncan, Inferno was Fox’s only film made in this process. (The following year, Spyros Skouros and Darryl F. Zanuck brought out CinemaScope, which revolutionized the motion picture industry with its wide screen and projection and seven-channel stereophonic sound.) Nevertheless, Inferno is an excellent color noir, with a terrific story line that could have been filmed in any wide-screen process—and is one of the “A” films shot in 3-D that shows off the value of the process and spins a good tale without sacrificing its story line to special effects.

The film opens in the American Southwest, in an unnamed desert (probably the Mojave), where Donald Carson has broken his leg during a bout of drinking while on a prospecting trip for manganese with his wife, Geraldine, and Joseph Duncan. Apparently Duncan and Geraldine had become lovers two nights earlier, and plan to leave Carson in the desert to die. Saying they will go for help, they leave Carson with some food, water, and a gun, then drive to the opposite side of the desert, where they pretend to be stranded and are rescued by local police. They say Carson ran off, drunk, into the desert, and tire tracks and faked footprints seem to corroborate their story. The police send out search

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