A Day of Fury

Plot synopsis:
A gunslinger named Jagade happens upon a stranger in trouble on the trail and saves his life. Jagade immediately regrets it upon learning the man is Alan Burnett, who is now only a U.S. Marshal but on his way to the town of West End to marry Jagade's former sweetheart that very day.
Jagade gets to town first and disrupts the proceedings. He taunts the betrothed woman, Sharman Fulton, in public. She was once a dancehall girl of low repute, but has since been taken into the home of the honorable Judge John J. McLean and has redeemed her reputation. Preacher Jason, nevertheless, calls off the wedding after Jagade sullies her name.
Burnett arrives but has no call to arrest Jagade and remains indebted for the gunfighter's aid on the trail. Jagade provokes him, forcing open the saloon on a Sunday against the town's regulation, infuriating the meek Miss Timmons and the Preacher, who now intends to burn the saloon down. To stop him, Sharman agrees to Jagade's condition that she don her red dancehall costume of old. She is called a harlot in town and kicked out of the Judge's home.
A young cowboy, Billy Brand, who admires Jagade shoots the preacher. But he is overcome with remorse when Miss Timmons is humiliated by Jagade and hangs herself. A church bell distracts Jagade during a shootout and Burnett's bullet fatally wounds him. As he dies, Jagade realizes the bell was rung in honor of the preacher he killed.

Tags: violence

Review:
An inspiration for "High Plains Drifter"?.
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..
Town Full Of Hypocrites.
Two of television's best known cowboy heroes, Dale Robertson from Tales Of Wells Fargo and the Range Rider Jock Mahoney star in this unusual western about a town full of hypocrites.
Imagine High Noon had we probed a bit deeper into the town of Hadleyville and its citizens who would not back up Gary Cooper and you have A Day Of Fury.Notorious gunslinger Robertson arrives in the town and the townspeople are righteously aroused.
They want Marshal Mahoney to just run this guy out of town.
But Mahoney's life was once saved by him and with no wants or warrants out on him, Robertson is a free man until he actually commits a crime.Which works out fine as Robertson bit by bit turns things around completely and it's the marshal these fine citizens turn on.
There's also the complicating factor that Mahoney's fiancé Mara Corday has history with Robertson.A trio of standout supporting performances come from Jan Merlin as a local tough, John Dehner as the town minister, and most of all Dee Carroll as the spinster school teacher who is a repressed and tragic figure.Mahoney and Robertson have some good chemistry in their scenes.
A nice mixture of antagonism and respect goes into their dialog.A Day Of Fury is a real sleeper of a western.
Caught it by accident almost, glad I did..
Tightly-paced, high-pressure, not quite formulaic 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..
The stars of the film.
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"..
as weak as writing gets.
This Western is a "waste".
There's obviously a lot of resources used here, attention to the spectacle and color, but it's very much "style over substance", because the script, is terrible.
How is it terrible?
There's no credibility in characters.
A good story involves credible characters in incredible circumstances.
We do have the incredible situation here.
We have the old West, with the scenery, although most of it is set in the town itself.
It's one of those "Western town movies" with way too much of the story in the town.
The characters, however, are not convincing.
The acting is less than third grade.
That's a clue there.
That none of the actors are convincing.
And most of them are experienced in Westerns.
Dale Robertson never really did much acting with his gamut of one emotion and expression, his self important sassiness, which always looks stupid, and even more so here.
Then you have Dehner, Mahoney, and the others, who are wasted here.
Since all the actors are "unconvincing", we're left with the fact that the director just walked through this in sleep.
Attention was given to blocking, to style, to spectacle, to color.
And that makes it even worse that the characters are laughably one dimensional.
I'm not sure there is even one case in this movie of believable motivation in a character.
They just magically do and say things that come out of left field, with absolutely no motivation, particularly the stereotype played by Robertson.
Why does he just act like a creep for no reason?
No one cares.
He's a creep, but in any event, there is no credible reason given.
The same can be said for the other characters.
Mahoney certainly delivers on acting, being the only one who appears to even try, but his motivation is not believable.
Now the casual observer may wonder what this has to do with the entertainment factor of this movie and the enjoyment thereof, but the reality is that the casual observer needs the motivation to be credible.
The casual observer just doesn't realize this.
When the motivation isn't there, it becomes farce, and that would work if this was a comedy, but it isn't a comedy..
Two of Hollywood's finest Western actors but a weak story..
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..
Not One Of The Better Westerns.
This movie was similar to Audie Murphy's "No Name On The Bullet," but it was better....but not by a whole lot.
It was still too talky for a western.The hero of the story, played by Jock Mahoney, was very bland and the female lead, played by Mara Corday, also offered little.
The villain was the only interesting character.
Dale Robertson played him.
Mahoney and Robertson went on to star with TV westerns that were good.The movie is only 72 minutes but really doesn't a whole lot, story-wise.
You might see it on TV as it has never been issued on VHS or DVD.
Since it's a free look, fine, but I don't think you'll be too impressed..
Good Premise, Flatly Executed.
To challenge b&w TV, Universal turned out a number of these Technicolor B-westerns in the mid- 1950's.
I don't know why they bothered with color here since the action seldom leaves town.
Except for the opening scene, it looks like the entire movie was shot on the Universal lot, with no colorful vistas to spice up the visuals.
That might be okay if the screenplay weren't so talky or if Jock Mahoney as the marshal could work up some emotion.
Too bad he and the comely Corday appear to be walking through their respective roles.
Then too, one of the great sneering punks of the period, Jan Merlin, is largely wasted in a weak role.
Dale Robertson as the bad guy manages to show some life, but gets little help from director Jones who appears unengaged except for the sequence of Billy (Merlin) fleeing town, which happily shows some imagination.
Actually, having a moral debt to the bad guy as the movie's premise has real dramatic possibility.
But that would have taken a better director and a more motivated cast.
As things stand, it's only an average oater, at best..
Excellent unusual Western -- gets better with each viewing.
I liked this movie when I first saw it many years ago.
Today it seems even better -- a good, well planned, logical, noir-like story (even if a mite unrealistic); and good acting and production values.
I recommend it highly.I can see why it got a low vote here (not many action scenes, few outdoor scenes, many talky scenes, the bad guy is the main character).
It is surely an unusual Western -- strong on character and moral symbolism.Here are some observations (including some mild spoilers):-- the ponderous forward to the film describes it as the "final chapter" of untamed gunfighters standing in the way of "civilization." At the end of the film, Mahoney asks Robertson why he didn't just leave, and Robertson replies that there was no other place to go, as though the town of West End was the last place for him to assert his way of life.-- Robertson had no gang (other than errand-boy Merlin).
He got his way by force of character and paying the blacksmith, barber, et.
high sums to give up their principles and work on Sunday.-- it was interesting that bad guy Robertson saved Marshal Mahoney's life at the start of the film, so it was implied throughout that Marshal Mahoney was protecting Robertson out of favoritism/repaying a debt.
But actually, Robertson never broke the law till maybe the end when he liquored up some guys to try to lynch Mahoney.
The town council could have (but didn't) enact any blue laws!
-- an early several minutes scene shows the expert, economical direction: Robertson arrives in town and shows his skill with a gun, his arrogance, distrust of the courts and familiarity with Mara Corday, the Marshal's intended.
Mahoney soon shows up to defend Robertson.
Mahoney gets credit for killing the man actually shot by Robertson while saving Mahoney.
Most of the important characters (preacher, Miss Timmons, the Judge.
etc.) are introduced.-- There were many well written lines in the film.
One of my favorites is when Mara Corday expresses to her fiancée Mahoney that she is afraid that with Robertson free to do as he pleases, she might revert to her old saloon girl life.
Mahoney replies, "I'm sure of you even if you're not sure of yourself." -- the supporting acting was fine, especially Jan Merlin and Dee Carroll (Miss Timmons) and the preacher.
Remarkable the way all the many supporting characters were so quickly fleshed out, each with their own quirks.-- neat the way Robertson can manipulate the men and women in town because he understands how they tick and preys on their weaknesses, except Marshal Mahoney -- he has integrity, and Robertson (and the townies) wonders if it is because Mahoney is afraid of Robertson or is in debt to Robertson for saving his life or is simply a rock-solid lawman.-- had to feel sorry for beautiful Corday.
She is grateful to the town for accepting her as a reformed saloon girl.
She sneaks (so the town won't know) into the saloon to beseech Robertson to go off with her to save the town.
He says no, but she is seen sneaking out of the saloon.
The townsfolk (including her once-friendly Judge-landlord) kicks her out, and she won't be accepted in anyplace decent, so Mahoney has to take her to a hotel in town.
And after Mahoney is jailed, she is about to be forced out of town with Robertson..
"I turned over a rotten log.
I didn't create what came crawlin' out from under it"..
"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.