Gun Fury

Rock Hudson and Donna Reed are a couple finally together after the civil war, travelling on a stagecoach when it's hijacked by Phil Carey's outlaw gang. That's pretty much the story. What ensues is a lot of running around amid some beautiful Arizona desert scenery which is the real star here. Lovely cinematography, but weak script let's this Roaul Walsh western in 3D down. Hudson on the way up to greater things is clearly the main reason for making this but his acting hasn't quite met the standard he later achieves in Giant and he's out acted by Phil Carey who exudes more charisma here. Even Lee Marvin is more interesting in a small role. Neville Brand I thought was wasted and his usual screen villainy given little to do. Quite why Carey shows such an interest in Donna Reed, I simply don't know as they've never met before the stage hijac. She's hardly a femme fatale, just a regular girl unfortunate enough to have been there and this is a weakness in the plot. Had she been a former girlfriend of Carey's who has dumped him would have made more sense but his obsession with keeping her with the gang for no apparent reason is baffling, just a ploy for Hudson to chase after them across the scenery. The film later becomes predictable like a TV western, losing the earlier interest that had kept me watching, especially the performance of the underrated Leo Gordon. Should and could have ended better given the talent here.

Gun Fury marked the first loan out film that Rock Hudson did after he became a star at Universal. Rock did this one for Columbia just as his star was rising fast with the movie going public.

The film has the look and feel of a Randolph Scott western, it's just the kind of story that Scott was in fact doing at Columbia with Budd Boetticher. I would not be surprised if this wasn't something Scott might have had in mind for himself. Of course there would have been changes made as Scott was a much older man than the youthful Rock Hudson.

Donna Reed is Hudson's fiancé who is on a stagecoach west to meet her man. On the stage also is notorious outlaw Philip Carey traveling incognito because he plans to meet up with his gang and rob the stage later.

Carey is best known as the boss of those exuberant Texas Rangers in Laredo, but here he's a bad man, rotten through and through. He also decided to take Donna Reed as well because he's tired of the woman he has now, Roberta Haynes.

Carey thinks he's killed Hudson, but Hudson's quite alive and on his trail with a former Carey outlaw member Leo Gordon along with him.

Gun Fury shows how much the western grew up in the Fifties. This kind of story involving kidnapping and sexual abuse was definitely not for the Saturday matinée kiddie trade. Though Hudson and Reed are good, it's Philip Carey who really dominates the film.

He's got quite a collection of noted screen bad guys in his crew. Besides Leo Gordon, Neville Brand and Lee Marvin are also around.

Can't tell you how it ends, but Hudson and Gordon pick up an Indian along the way who proves to be of great assistance.

Gun Fury is directed by Raoul Walsh and stars Rock Hudson, Donna Reed, Phillip Carey, Roberta Haynes, Leo Gordon, Lee Marvin & Neville Brand. It's adapted from the novel Ten Against Caesar written by Kathleen B. George & Robert A. Granger. Cinematographer is Lester White, with Sedona, Arizona used for the location work. It is a Technicolor production out of Columbia Pictures.

Plot sees Hudson as Civil War veteran Ben Warren, who after meeting up with Jennifer (Reed), the girl he is soon to marry, catches the stage to Haynesville. But little do they know that two of the passengers (Carey & Gordon) that are travelling with them are outlaws who are after the strongbox on board the coach. Once the hold-up occurs a fight breaks out and during the mêlée Ben is shot and presumed dead . The outlaws flee taking Jennifer with them. But Ben is not dead, and now he's after them. Having recently turned pacifist, just what will he do to get his love back unharmed?.

Originally presented in 3-D on its release, Gun Fury is a brisk Western that unsurprisingly given it's director's keen eye for such things, isn't found wanting for action. However, for depth of story and character studies, it's not one too get excited about. Which is a shame because there's definitely scope within the plot to expand some of the protagonists psychological themes. Still, if one is after a quick fix of Western action staples then this serves its purpose. Gun play, horse pursuits and even fist fights in the water, Walsh delivers pulse raising scenes set in amongst the gorgeous back drops of Sedona. But be warned, the finale is some what tepid and doesn't do justice to what had gone before it.

Cast wise Hudson is solid enough but is blown off the screen by both Carey & Gordon. While Reed is attractive and professional in what is a pretty undemanding role. In the support cast there's the added bonus of having tough guys Marvin & Brand playing villains. The score from uncredited Arthur Morton & Mischa Bakaleinikoff links the narrative well enough, and there's some fun to be had with the 3-D moments as various items are launched at the screen. So a safe time filler for Western fans then, but it could, and should, have been much more. 6/10

"I'm sick of violence and force," says Ben Warren, the rich young rancher who is taking his fiancee Jennifer to California for their wedding. Like most Americans of his generation, he served in the Civil War and was disgusted by the slaughter. Now he is devoted to working his big spread and marrying his beautiful girl (played by Donna Reed).

Unfortunately, the barren South West is not remote enough from recent history. Men have crossed the Rockies to escape from the bitterness back East, but they have carried their violence westwards with them.

The film is the story of a stagecoach holdup which turns into an abduction, then a manhunt. Ben Warren (Rock Hudson) sets off after the bad guys who kidnapped his bride-to-be, and pursues them across the Arizona desert.

A standard horse opera, "Gun Fury" contains no more than the average complement of guns and precious little fury. There are absurdities in the storyline, like the holdup with fake cavalry escort, and the ease with which the 'good guys' recover from seemingly mortal harm (Ben is shot dead, apparently, but then gets up and carries on as if nothing happened, and Jess is almost dead from sunstroke but quickly rallies and rides after Slayton). The trade of Jennifer for Jess is silly, not least because Jess would never want to rejoin Slayton's gang.

One directorial quirk exhibited by Raoul Walsh is the way in which any character who throws something (knife, rock, pottery) has a victim's-point-of-view cutaway inserted. The viewer is, for an instant, seemingly the target of the missile. The purpose of this oddity is to exploit the 3-D format in which the film was originally shot.

The only other talking point is the presence of Lee Marvin and Neville Brand as bad guys in Slayton's gang.

Verdict - workmanlike western, but nothing special

This originally-filmed 3-D pot boiler features a darkly gorgeous Donna Reed partnering an equally handsome Rock Hudson- the latter displaying the macho charisma he hid behind for most of his career. But the thing is, he's good -and so's Donna. They play an engaged couple about to settle in California at the end of the Civil War. Rock has the odd good line 'Bullets are democratic- they don't only kill badmen' -no doubt an orphan from scriptwriter Kathleen George's novel TEN AGAINST CEASAR on which movie was based and a concept which would have found an echo in post-Korean and WWII veteran audiences.

Ex-Confederate Army cronies' embitterment and discontent is the excuse for stagecoach robbery, murder and kidnapping. Ben Warren [Hudson] is left for dead and his fiancé Jennifer Ballard [Reed] snatched under the unlikely pretext that gang leader Frank Slayton [Phil Carey] fancies her. The later elemental suggestion of suppressed carnality is best left as it was -suppressed. Donna Reed, despite torn blouse -is Rock's girl, and she remains so. Doesn't the Phil Carey know how things in Westerns work out? The plot of George's novel, TEN AGAINST CAESAR has been uncomplicated to a degree where an orangutan, given five seconds and a paintbrush, could have written the subsequence and denouement.

But credibility is not what this movie is all about.

It's about how parted Rock and Donna are re-united and triumph over -albeit manufactured -adversity ; it's about searing Arizona desert; the magnificence of 1950 Technicolor Western-making, and perhaps most of all about the making of desolation beautiful. I remember its flat screen release as a kid, was dying to see it but couldn't afford the admission. Had I seen it then I know how I would have reacted - I would have considered it good value and left the cinema, six-gun at the ready, seeking a showdown.