A Day of Fury

A masterpiece of B western, I mean a western without the Duke, Jimmy Stewart or Gary Cooper. Audie Murphy could have had Dale Robertson's role, easily, as a kind of NO NAME ON THE BULLET, a more than ambivalent character, bringing a brilliant chemistry between Mahoney and him. And in this scheme, I am surprised that Robertson doesn't wear dark, black clothes. This kind of topic is not totally new, though; I have no other titles in mind right now, except THE LAST CHALLENGE (starring Glenn Ford) concerning the resemblance with this one, but there are many other examples of westerns, and not only, ambiguous friendship between the good guy and the "bad" one. Of couse Robertson is excellent here. Town people hypocrisy is also shown very well, but, again, it is not new in westerns. People accept you in the first place, like you, admire you, then they suddenly change their mind for anything.... Yes, a very worth seeing western.

I am in my mid 70s. I grew up on westerns shown on TV though I first think of TV series such as Cheyenne and Have Gun Will Travel. If you want to see a pretty typical movie western from that era, A Day Of Fury would do the job. It might have been a bit more of a morality tale than the average, but the acting was just so-so. I had a tough time thinking that Dale Robertson was the bad guy. It took constant mental reminders. This may have been the only villain he ever played on TV or in the movies. It's the only time I've ever seen him in that capacity.

Anyhow, I gave the movie a 6-star rating. I guess that's kind of the going rate.

The nation's sweeping expansion westward . Standing the path on the new civilization were undisciplined , untamed men , the gunfighters whose way of life was coming to an end . The final chapter to the long , violent struggle was written on a summer sunday by a man called.. Jagade . It is a time when law is coming to the west and begins with a manhunt in which a Marshal (Jock Mahoney) is saved by a passing gunman named Jagade (Dale Robertson) donning his six-guns . When the gunslinger arriving a little town called West End that has the usual shops and buildings, as General merchandise, Livery stable, Hardware, Barber shop, Saloon , Hotel and of course the Church, then he finds again the town Marshal . Subsequently , the situation is further complicated due to a former loving relation between Jagade and Sharman Fulton (Mara Corday) who is about to marry Marshal Allan Burnett .The Story of Jagade...last of the MAVERICK KILLERS! This Was The Day Of The Rope And The Ravager!

This Western is set in a time when law was expanding westward , appearing a mysterious stranger , who comes to embitter some embattled citizens. As gunslinger Jagade arrives in a law-abiding god-fearing town and he arranges to change the townsfolk into scoff-law sinners , while the town Marshal Allan Burnett is powerless due to a moral debt to Jagade , and things go wrong when the sheriff learns the previous relationship between his fiancée and Jagade . Well crafted Western with interesting screenplay by James Edmiston and Oscar Brodney , displaying twists and turns . Although atmospheric , it's also downbeat and sometimes just downright nasty . The story is almost terrific as the drifter comes to strange frontier town just in time to reckoning villagers and bandits. This stirring picture contains a powerful examination of morality and hypocrisy on people of a little town . Dale Roberson plays decently as an avenger gunslinger , though only this time the pistolero appears to have been sent from hell rather than heaven to carry out a vendetta . Jock Mahoney gives a good acting as a Marshal who is caught between the town citizens fears and the debt he owes the gunslinger. While the third starring , Mara Corday , shows brilliantly her beauty and and gorgeous face . Good casting with several notorious and familiar secondaries as Carl Benton Reid , Jan Merlin , Dee Carroll, Malcolm Atterbury , Phil Chambers , James Bell , and John Dehner as a reverend.

This Universal Pictures movie with great main and support cast, being efficiently produced and competently directed . Furthermore, it contains a colorful and glimmer cinematography by Ellis Carter . As well as rousing and stirring musical score by Irving Gertz and Henry Mancini , though uncredited .This outlandish motion picture produced by Robert Arthur was professionally directed by Harmon Jones. He was a craftsman who worked as a production manager, editor, producer and filmmaker. He directed all kinds of genres as Westerns, drama, Thriller, Comedy, Film Noir, such as : The beast of Budapest, Wolf Larsen, Gorilla at large, Target zero, Canyon river, City of bad men , The pride of St Louis, Bloodhound of Broadway, As young a you feel. And he directed a lot of episodes of popular TV series as Land of giants , Death valley, Voyage to the bottom of the sea, The Virginian, Iron Horse, Perry Mason, Gunslinger, Daniel Boone, Iron Horse, The Monroe, The Zorro, among others. Rating 6. 5/10. Decent and above average Western.

A well-turned screenplay, efficient editing, good small-scale production values, and tense directing make A Day of Fury much better than most Westerns.

Dale Robertson is a better actor than his reputation, but all 3 leads are limited in range. The best role and performance are the Preacher by John Dehner, who helps any film in which he appears. Most Westerns present ministers either as comic-cowardly milquetoasts or as unrealistic studs who give up their guns for the good book. When changes unsettle the town, Day of Fury's Preacher is the first to lose his temper and threaten violence, but then he's embarrassed by his own failing and horrified that his parishioners turn into a lynch mob.

The plot plays an interesting variation on the classic Western formula of the Old Wild West struggling to survive in or against the Cleaned-Up Bourgeois Town. The taciturnity of Robertson's Jigade fairly inverts the man-of-few-words Sheriff typically played by Joel McCrea or Randolph Scott into a Mephistophelean villain who quietly but steadily chips and shatters the thin veneer of civilization until the townsfolk break down into drunken irresponsibility, foolish greed, and vengeful terror. Jagade's opportunistic power compromises the town's Sheriff, played by the physically imposing Jock Mahoney, whose taciturnity can only dwindle to mute puzzlement until the wild card in Jagade's deck--the punk gunman Billy Brant--changes the game and creates a clear path of action for the law.

The sets are few, but the director keeps moving the characters across each other in well-defined space. The film's most impressive quality is to open with an atmosphere of uncertainty that steadily escalates into tension or dread. But its most interesting feature is that the anti-hero Jagade seems to have orchestrated the story as a suicide note.

I really like these Universal-International colour westerns made in the 1950s. This one was very probably the movie that got Dale Robertson the starring role in "Tales Of Wells Fargo" on TV (which I loved when it first appeared).

The chief extra reason why I like this movie though is the other main star was Jock Mahoney, in his usual understated style. He, of course, had previously starred in that superbly action-packed series "The Range Rider" and later "Yancy Derringer".