A Day of Fury (1956)

At first rather annoying in its heavy emphasis on reenactments, this movie ultimately proves fascinating, simply because the complicated, highly dramatic tale it tells still almost defies belief.

If you like to be scared, if you like to laugh, and if you like to learn a thing or two at the movies, this absolutely cannot be missed.

After playing with our expectations, this turns out to be a very different sort of film.

The acting in this movie is really good.

Dale Robertson has always been a great actor, and Jock Mahoney was one of the most talented horseman, stuntman, and gunslinger in Hollywood. This movie was not right for Dale Robertson, because he was always better than this. I don't really know how Jan Merlin fit in at all. We were never told he and Dale were old friends. However, the female role Mara Cordey,threw me. I thought for certain that she was Margaret Field (or later Maggie Mahoney) who became Jocks real wife. I had to check that out to make sure she didn't use another name. Margaret did some acting in Mahoney westerns so I was sure that was her. I couldn't tell the difference...but I guess Jock could. Her role did make the movie interesting. I never say Mahoney in a bad movie, and my favorite was Slim Carter.

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.

"Day of Fury" gets off to an interesting start when Dale Robertson's character saves Jock Mahoney from an ambush on the trail to West End, but then struggles to deliver in any meaningful manner on the way to a final showdown between the principals. It's supposed to be a story about the passing of the Old West as frontier towns try to put the reputations of feared gunslingers behind them, but having the town marshal in jail for half the story reduced a lot of the dramatic tension that could have been.Maybe the biggest problem with the story was having a character named Jagade. It was pronounced with three syllables enunciating the 'e' at the end, but that just didn't sound quite right. A simple Ja-gade wouldn't have been much better, and since it doesn't seem to derive from another language, it wound up being this big question mark for me throughout the story. I really wish the script would have explained it in some way.The other thing I didn't get was the lapdog character Billy (Jan Merlin), especially since he seemed to tip off the ambush guy on the second floor who was gunning for Jagade. It was fitting Jagade whacked him for it, but instead of making himself an enemy, Billy turns into Jagade's go-fer the rest of the way. Just very odd the way his character was written.The main recommendation, if there is one to be found for this film, is the presence of Robertson and Mahoney, both going on within a couple of years to head up their own TV Westerns. Robertson had the lead in 'Tales of Wells Fargo' as special agent Jim Hardie, while Mahoney brought a suave and sophisticated portrayal to the role of Yancy Derringer. I watched them both as a kid, and when I get the chance, still watch them today.You knew the finale had to come down to a shoot-out between the two, but the writers held their cards pretty close to the vest. We never got to see how good Marshal Burnett (Mahoney) was with a gun, so that element of doubt was always there. At the same time, Jagade pretty much established himself as a heel once he brought the town of West End under his sway. It wasn't the most dramatic of finishes to be sure, but was enough to settle the triangle between the protagonists and Sharman Fulton (Mara Corday). The thing is, it seemed to me she could have had the outcome go either way.

Despite the wooden acting of its stars, this film's intriguing themes and well-written dialog elevate it to something out of the ordinary. "A Day of Fury" is about the end of the Old West, embodied by the gunfighter, and its replacement by "decent folk" and their values. However, one gunfighter returns to town and exposes the hypocrisy and small-mindedness that lies beneath the veneer of civilization. This film is a must-see for those who love Clint Eastwood's "High Plains Drifter" as it seems to have inspired that film to a large degree. (One character remarks that if Jagade is allowed to stay, "He'll turn this town into hell.") Despite the emotionless acting of its leads and the irritating, strangely pronounced name of the main character, I enjoyed this film a great deal for its cynical view of the human character and its exposure of human weakness and fear.