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Lizards in Movies
 
Duel In The Sun (1946)
 
Spoiler Alert !

Some of these pictures and descriptions may give away plot details that you might not want to know before watching the film.
 
Duel In The Sun Duel In The Sun Duel In The Sun
I haven't seen many chuckwallas in movies at all. I was pleasantly surprised to see a couple of them at the end of this campy overblown and oversexed Western Melodrama that was nicknamed "Lust in the Dust." It was made by David O. Selznick, the producer of Gone With The Wind, and stars his wife, Jennifer Jones, and other big Hollywood stars. The movie sucks, but it made serious money at the box office.

Jones plays a young "half-breed" woman named Pearl. (She got an Oscar nomination for her role.) Pearl is riding her horse through Hollywood's version of Texas (which means it's really Arizona. I wonder if any Westerns supposedly set in Texas were ever shot in Texas.)

To show us just how dangerous and scary the desert is, we see Pearl's horse getting spooked by a coyote (in front of a cheesy fake backdrop) and then later we see the chuckwallas, which, I think, are supposed to be creepy and frightening. It's hard to know why we see them. The camera just pans over from the lizards to show Pearl riding in the wash and then she keeps riding.

At least they used real lizards in a real wash instead of fake ones, but they were almost certainly brought to the location.