Fury At Furnace Creek (1948/Fox)
Picture:
C+ Sound: C+ Extras: C Film: C+
Victor
Mature gives one of his better performances in the Western drama Fury At Furnace Creek, H. Bruce
Humberstone’s decent 1948 tale of two brothers who cannot stand each other, but
must come together to clear the name of their father. The father (Robert Warwick) is falsely
accused of crimes he did not commit, so the brothers (Mature and Glenn Langan)
go about refuting the charges with different approaches.
Charles Booth’s
screenplay of the David Garth story (with additional dialogue by Winston
Miller) is smart, blunt, sometimes bold for its time and the cast that also
includes Coleen Gray, Reginald Gardiner, Albert Dekker, Fred Clark, Charles
Kemper and even Jay Silverheels is exceptional.
Humberstone is a better journeyman filmmaker than he is given credit for
and this film is proof of that.
The 1.33
image is black and white, a little softer than I would have liked and is shot
by Harry Jackson, who worked with Humberstone before on the Charlie Chan
series. It is undeniably a good looking
film, but I had only wished it was in Blu-ray.
The Dolby Digital 2.0 Stereo is a tad better than the 2.0 Mono, with a
good score by the underrated David Raskin (Al
Capone (1959) and The Patsy)
also helping to make this more than just a B-movie Western. Extras include three stills sections and trailers
for this & a few other Fox Westerns.
- Nicholas Sheffo
