Sea Fury (1958)

Please don't spend money on this.

A terrific literary drama and character piece that shows how the process of creating art can be seen differently by those doing it and those looking at it from the outside.

Through painfully honest and emotional moments, the movie becomes irresistibly relatable

It's the kind of movie you'll want to see a second time with someone who hasn't seen it yet, to remember what it was like to watch it for the first time.

This film's sole claim to fame is as the last big screen appearance of vetern actor Victor McLaglen. His character, Bellew, is an aging tugboat captain working out of a Spanish port on the Bay of Biscay. His eye is taken - and who could blame him - by the beautiful young Josita (Lucianna Paluzzi). Her father - whom the value-system of her time and place tells her she must obey - wants her to encourage him. When she objects to the idea of marrying an old man he tells her that, because he's old, Bellew won't last long. When she inherits his wealth she can provide her father with a small pension, take the rest and go to live in Madrid or Barcelona and marry for love. Unsurprisingly Josita is more taken with Abel (Stanley Baker), a young sailor whom Bellew had taken under his wing. Much of the film is taken up with this unremarkable love/lust triangle. By far the best part is a well-done action sequence where the tugboat's crew try to salvage a ship carrying a dengerous cargo. A solid cast includes such guture stars as Barry Foster, Robert Shaw, Rupert Davies.

SEA FURY is a British slice of seafaring drama that sees Stanley Baker (a ubiquitous presence in British cinema of the 1950s) joining the crew of a tugboat that spends a lot of time searching for stricken vessels to claim the salvage rights to. Unfortunately, for the majority of the running time this plays out as a romantic melodrama, and as such it's occasionally turgid and rather long-winded. Baker falls for the voluptuous charms of Luciana Paluzzi (and who can blame him?) but salty sea-dog Victor McLaglen also has his sights on here.Thankfully the film does pick up for a thoroughly suspenseful climax involving a cargo of dangerous chemicals on an abandoned ship in a storm, and Baker really comes into his own at this point; it's just a pity it takes so long to get to this point. Still, the film is worth watching if for no other reason to see an excellent supporting cast at play. Keep your eyes open for the likes of Robert Shaw, Francis De Wolff, Joe Robinson, Percy Herbert, Rupert Davies, Roger Delgado, Barry Foster, and Dermot Walsh, many of them appearing long before they became famous.

For a man who lived and tasted more of life before his movie career began in the late twenties than most actors, indeed most people will ever know, it is fitting to see Vic in his old form one last time. The film is peppered with references to his life both on and off stage. From the opening sequence with him barking orders and bodily shoving people aside, we see that though in his early seventies, he's still got enough for one last performance.The scene where he pins a medal on Stanley Baker, and plays his trademark rough-an-tumble drunk is classic McLaglen. His half-hearted attempt at courting the lovely Luciana Paluzzi culminates in an amusing treat of a scene that ends with Paluzzi storming out of the captain's cabin and Victor picking himself up off the floor.Later we find Vic's character Captain Bellew with Stanley Baker's Abel Hewson on the bridge, as Bellew describes an experience from his early days at sea, and declares that he's done a bit of everything in his time. He says it with an honest conviction because he is quite easily telling the truth about his own life.In all, I rate it a great watch for anyone who admires the man's irrepressible zest for life and the adventurous tale of his winding course through it. One of the last great men of the Victorian Era takes his bow with this one.

Victor McLaglen's last feature film found him trying to romance Luciana Paluzzi. McLaglen's a salvage tug captain and he's going through an end life crisis romancing young Luciana Paluzzi who's young enough to be his granddaughter. Seems that her father Roger Delgado, an innkeeper in a North Spain sea village, would like to get his daughter fixed up with a comfortable situation for both of them. He encourages her flirtations with McLaglen. But she's got eyes for Stanley Baker who's a member of McLaglen's crew.What saves this film is the action sequences on the high seas, especially Stanley Baker risking life and limb to dump a steel drum of lethal sodium during a storm, on board a listing freighter. Reason enough to see this film. There's also a bit of rivalry between Baker and another member of McLaglen's crew, Robert Shaw. Shaw and Baker both went on to solid careers as tough leading men. Baker never got quite the acclaim that Shaw did internationally, but he was good box office in Great Britain.Roger Delgado was best known in the British TV series Doctor Who for originating the role of the Doctor's number one nemesis, the Master. Death in an automobile crash in 1973 cut short a very good career.Watch it for the action sequences.