Rache ohne Gnade

At the beginning of the film, Captain Walsh (Reginald Gardiner) announces to a group of folks on a wagon train that he and his cavalry were ordered back to their fort by General Blackwell. These people beg the cavalry to stay, as there are hostile Indians in the region...but he leaves. Not surprisingly, the settlers are soon massacred. The problem is that the General insists he never ordered the Captain back to the fort...and the Captain insists that he did. At a court martial to decide the case, General Blackwell drops dead on the witness stand and no one is able to prove anything...and the General dies with a stain on his record.

After his father's death, Captain Blackwell (Glenn Langan) goes off looking for proof that his father was not responsible for the settlers' deaths. At the same time, unbeknownst to him, his ne'er do well brother, Cash (Victor Mature) is also investigating under cover. Considering Cash is a professional gambler and an embarrassment to the family, he can poke around much better than his brother and soon infiltrates a gang who appear responsible for the massacre...and their toady, Captain Walsh. What's next? See the film.

This is a very good western in many ways. The biggest plus is the plot. About 95% of all westerns have three basic plots....but this one is different. The other big plus is Victor Mature, an A-list actor, starring in the film. Often in the 1950s, Fox and the other studios would usually use B-listers (or C-listers) for westerns and the A-list ones for the prestige pictures. Here, however, you get Mature as well as a pretty good villain (Albert Dekker). All in all, very good...nearly earning a 9.

Because it is a western built around an investigation, as a crime drama, a court drama. The main interest is for me Albert Dekker as a villainous character. For the rest, I repeat that this western is not like any other of this kind. This is for me one of the best movies from director Bruce Humberstone; he will repeat in western with TEN WANTED MEN for Columbia Pictures and starring Randolph Scott. But keep in mind that he was mostly specialized in comedies, light hearted dramas or musicals. A film noir though, I WAKE UP SCREAMING, also starring Vic Mature, was a little gem to pick up from Humberstone's filmography.

Fury at Furnace Creek is directed by H. Bruce Humberstone and collectively written by Charles G. Booth, Winston Miller and David Garth. It stars Victor Mature, Glenn Langan, Coleen Gray, Albert Dekker and Reginald Gardiner. Music is by David Raksin and cinematography by Harry Jackson.

When General Blackwell (Robert Warwick) is accused of instigating an Apache massacre, he refutes the allegation so strongly in court he keels over and dies. With the family name tarnished, the estranged Blackwell brothers (Mature and Langan) must put aside their differences to hopefully unearth the truth and clear their father's name.

Nice. Without bringing new dimensions to this formula of plotting, Fury at Furnace Creek is stylish and doesn't take the easy narrative options so prevalent in other Westerns of the 40s. Sure, the standard action quotient is adhered to, with Apache attack, pursuits, saloon shoot-out and the good versus bad finale, but screenplay and scripting has an intelligence about it; and the cast performances coupled with Jackson's shadowy infused black and white photography, make this well worthy of a look by the Western faithful. 7/10

Fury At Furnace Creek has a most ruthless and cunning villain in control of some recently opened up territory. How Albert Dekker got control has him and his gang fomenting an Indian War with a massacre of a supply train and then an army fort. General Robert Warwick gets the blame for this when Captain Reginald Gardiner testifies at Warwick's court martial that he got an order to leave the wagon train unescorted on a written order from Warwick which disappears. Warwick dies on the stand of his court martial with his name still under a cloud.

However Warwick has two sons one is army captain Glenn Langan who takes a leave of absence to clear his father. The other is Victor Mature who was the black sheep of the family. They both work at clearing their father, sometimes at cross purposes though.

Victor Mature borrows a lot from his portrayal of Doc Holliday in My Darling Clementine in playing the black sheep son. I'm sure that Darryl Zanuck seeing the reviews Mature got for Doc Holiday led Zanuck to cast Mature in the lead of Fury At Furnace Creek.

Albert Dekker who played a slew of villainous parts in the Forties is one shrewd piece of work here. He overreaches however in his villainy. Better to have let the Indians do their own thing, but he's brought Chief Jay Silverheels in on his plans and doublecrosses him. That would turn out to be his downfall.

Providing comic relief as he usually did in films of the Forties is Charles Kemper who plays a boisterous muleskinner who likes to party hearty and regrets it. There's no jail in the town so Kemper is chained to an uprooted tree trunk and carries it around with him. It's a marvelous sight gag without any dialog. I was imagining Andy Griffith doing that with Otis Smith as Mayberry's town drunk.

The relationship of Mature and Langan also borrows a bit from the Warner Brothers classic The Oklahoma Kid with the good and bad brothers working at cross purposes to bring law and order into the territory. It turns out better for these brothers as well.

Fury At Furnace Creek is a good western, for Mature a good followup to his western debut in My Darling Clementine.

When a general gives an order to divert a military escort from a wagon train to the remote Fort Furnace Creek, the Apache leader "Little Dog" sees his chance to reduce everything to rubble... The horrified authorities proceed to court-martial the general, but he dies on the witness stand and it falls to his two, estranged, sons, to get to the bottom of this mystery. One, "Rufe" (Glenn Lankan) a soldier; the other "Cash" (Victor Mature) an astute gambler handy with his six-gun. The latter gets to the town where one of the chief witnesses against his father "Capt. Walsh" (Reginald Gardiner) has take refuge in the bottle. Clearly seeing he has something on his mind, "Cash" attempts to find out what. The arrival of the other brother, the murder of "Walsh" and a note that might clear things up all feature as the story comes to an head - appropriately, in the burnt out ruins of the fort. It's a solid, action-packed adventure that gives Mature a chance to be more than the usual swarthy, sandalled hero. Coleen Grey ("Molly") introduces the tiniest element of romance, but nothing to clutter the quickly-paced plot that amalgamates just about every theme from the genre. Some effort has been put into the production, and I quite enjoyed it.