Blowing Wild

This is a far cry from the two undisputed classics which had paired Gary Cooper and Barbara Stanwyck twelve years earlier and Hugo Fregonese is not in the same league as Messrs. Capra and Hawks whilst Philip Yordan's script is way below his best.

The old chemistry between Cooper and Stanwyck is still there of course and as a bonus we have the strong presence of Anthony Quinn, one of Cinema's genuine characters who worked very hard to develop and improve his craft whilst Ruth Roman's subtle sensuality offers a much needed contrast to the film's machismo and Miss Stanwyck's passionate intensity.

The film benefits from Dimitri Tiomkin's score, the cinematography of Sidney Hickox and most particularly its momentum for which editor Alan Crosland merits a special mention. In effect this opus represents a prime example of talented, professional artistes rising above their material.

Shotgun-toting, dynamite-wielding banditos in South America shake down local oil-drillers for cash; they run strapped American Gary Cooper out of business, forcing him into partnership with an old friend whose oil-site is doing well--but whose steely-eyed wife is a real wild-card. Surprisingly cheapjack production featuring three top stars (Cooper, Barbara Stanwyck, and Anthony Quinn), all of whom acquit themselves well with a script which seems half-finished. Ruth Roman is a con-artist who runs into Cooper a few times--and before you know it, she's declaring she loves him. Stanwyck puts forth a lot of heat, and gets us to believe in the tempestuous marriage she shares with Quinn, but there's little motivation for what comes next. The finale, which should have been as emotionally explosive as the effects, plays curiously flat, and there's no reasoning for why the bandits are so extreme in their destruction, nor why they choose the opportunities to strike when they do. From a narrative standpoint, the picture is a mess; however, it is quickly-paced, torrid in spots, and is frequently entertaining in spite of its flaws. **1/2 from ****

Basically a re-make of the Bogart film with a little wildcat oil action thrown in plus just to top things off Stanwyck at her nastiest. The setting is so similar to Treasure that Bond even begs for some coin off a man in a white hat. I never quite bought Babara as the object of all men's desire but she's so good at playing a possessive power mad heap of trouble that she overcomes any defecits in sex appeal. Cooper is 53 in this movie, looks 73, and moves like 93. Ward Bond is the annoying hen of a halfwit sidekick. Quinn great as always. But what's really good is the back drop of oil gushers, banditos, conman and Barbara blowing it wide open!

Director Hugo Fregonese, argentine-born but active in Hollywood and Europe after 1950, never impressed me. In BLOWING WILD he has the benefit of a superior cast - Gary Cooper, fresh from winning his second Best Actor Oscar the previous year with HIGH NOON; Antony Quinn, whose role in VIVA ZAPATA had won him the Best Supporting Actor Oscar only months before BLOWING WILD came out; Barbara Stanwyck, who never won an Academy award but came close several times; Ward Bord, a most dependable character actor; and Ruth Roman, a beauty who had come to notice in Hitchcock's STRANGERS ON A TRAIN two years earlier.

Unfortunately, BLOWING WILD begins by paying homage to the first minutes of TREASURE OF SIERRA MADRE, with two hardup Americans stranded in a Mexican town begging another American (who even wears a white suit, like John Huston in TREASURE) for meal money, and it carries on with a blatant ripoff of the nitro-carrying shenanigans of WAGES OF FEAR (LE SALAIRE DE LA PEUR, 1953).

As tough as that situation is, it gets tougher when the American fails to pay them, and has a lot of other creditors on his back. It becomes even more problematic when aging but still handsome Cooper catches Ruth's eye, and meets up with former partner Quinn, now a very rich 18-oil well owner who has married... you guessed it, Barbara, who feels nothing but contempt for Quinn and has never stopped loving former flame Cooper.

It's a small world and one about to explode with the active participation of banditos demanding large sums to leave the wells undamaged. Sadly, the action sequences show the Mexican outlaws just using their bodies to stop bullets but do not lose sight of venomous Barbara...

Pity that Fregonese could not make more of a hollow script trying to stay alive with the ideas of other recently made films, and even more that he could not draw better acting from such a star-laden cast. 6/10.

I have been an avid Turner Classic Movies viewer and cannot recall them ever playing this obscure Gary Cooper film. It's a shame, as it's pretty good. The film is a remake of the Cagney film "Torrid Zone" and it's also a bit similar (at least in the early part of the movie) to "Wages of Fear"...a film that also came out in 1953.

Jeff and Dutch (Gary Cooper and Ward Bond) are stuck in Mexico*...broke and with no prospects after bandits dynamite their oil rig. They get a crazy job transporting nitroglycerin but it turns out that the guy hiring them is a crook. Fortunately, at least at first, an old friend, Paco (Anthony Quinn), discovers their plight and hires them. Unfortunately, his wife, Marina (Barbara Stanwyck), is a total screwball...a femme fatale in the most vivid sense. She doesn't appreciate that Paco is handsome, loves her and provides her with anything she wants...she wants Jeff...mostly because it's wrong! What's to come of all this?

This is a decent film that gets better later due to Stanwyck's florid character. She's bad...really, really bad...and although she was not the lead, she easily dominated the film. The only negative is that you KNOW what's going to happen to her due to the notion enforced at the time that the evil must ultimately pay. Exciting and well worth seeing.