Movie: The Flaming Urge

The Flaming Urge: 1953 – B&W – 68 minutes

After a middle-aged narrator opens the movie with a stern admonition to not judge by appearances alone, the 20-year-old main character, Tom Smith (Harold Lloyd, Jr.) pipes up with his voice-over.  He says of himself, “I never seem to have a choice.” Born that way, he is a pyrophiliac, or in the expression used by the chasers themselves, a sparker – a person who derives gratification from burning buildings and the action of putting fires out. Compelled to chase fires whenever he hears sirens, he describes the condition as a curse since fire-chasing interferes with work and social life. Being suspected in a series of arson fires would mess daily life up too, one imagines.

But wait a minute. His clothes are especially neat and tidy. He wears flamboyant bowties – so conspicuous that an older man doodles them.  He has a flair for design and uses fabric creatively. His manners are very smooth and polished. He fawns over dogs, almost embarrassing them. He gets along swimmingly with older women.  He doesn’t pick up that young women are interested in him. He is awkward with the guys in the pool hall. His compulsion has forced him to move from town to town. An older man – the doodler – recognizes somebody else born that way and together they indulge their impulses to rush to fires.  Wait a darn minute – this movie is about what they used to call “The Love That Dare Not Speak Its Name.”

So as a period piece, the film is worth watching for the reaction of the townspeople to Tom's, uh, flaming urge.  When people find out, they feel only mildly nonplussed and want to help him with advice.  The older women, of course, want to fix him up with a girlfriend. The would-be girlfriend (Cathy Downs, hubba hubba) seeks suggestions to help Tom from a psych major who works in a stockroom. He says responsibility – i.e., marriage between a man and a woman – usually breaks the hold compulsive fancies exert over the sensitive and shilly-shallying.

Other touches make this forgotten movie exceptionally curious. It was shot in Monroe, Michigan, which can’t get more authentically small town (Toledo is the next stop of the bus that drops him off, another genuine touch).  The townspeople are types: the motherly middle-aged women, the gruff older men, the boisterous guys, the jaunty suitors, the smart girls that want to get the hell out of town before it buries them.

All in all, a movie worth watching for its unusual treatment of a topic from which movies usually stayed away.