Blowing Wild

I have been an avid Turner Classic Movies viewer and cannot recall them ever playing this obscure Gary Cooper film. It's a shame, as it's pretty good. The film is a remake of the Cagney film "Torrid Zone" and it's also a bit similar (at least in the early part of the movie) to "Wages of Fear"...a film that also came out in 1953.

Jeff and Dutch (Gary Cooper and Ward Bond) are stuck in Mexico*...broke and with no prospects after bandits dynamite their oil rig. They get a crazy job transporting nitroglycerin but it turns out that the guy hiring them is a crook. Fortunately, at least at first, an old friend, Paco (Anthony Quinn), discovers their plight and hires them. Unfortunately, his wife, Marina (Barbara Stanwyck), is a total screwball...a femme fatale in the most vivid sense. She doesn't appreciate that Paco is handsome, loves her and provides her with anything she wants...she wants Jeff...mostly because it's wrong! What's to come of all this?

This is a decent film that gets better later due to Stanwyck's florid character. She's bad...really, really bad...and although she was not the lead, she easily dominated the film. The only negative is that you KNOW what's going to happen to her due to the notion enforced at the time that the evil must ultimately pay. Exciting and well worth seeing.

Blowing Wild is some sort of modern times western, unpretentious but interesting.

Ruined friends Jeff Dawson (Gary Coooper) and Dutch Peterson (Ward Bond) are stuck in a small South American city after bandits blow to pieces their only oil well. As they wonder around they run into wealthy Paco Conway (Anthony Quinn) a former close friend of Dawson who is in the oil business and hires him to give him a hand. Dawson takes the job just to raise the money that will bring him and Dutch back to the United States. Paco's wife Marina Conway (Barbara Stanwyck)has had something with Dawson in the past and she seems willing to revive it. Bandits are also around menacing Paco's oil wells. Circumstances mix up and the plot turns out interesting as it shows the disturbing relationship between Jeff, Paco and Marina.

The film was shot in black and white by Argentine director Hugo Fregonese who makes a good job here in a story about friendship, ambition, passion and murder. Frankie Lane sings the adequate title song.

Cooper is very good as the straight minded Dawson as also is Anthomy Quinn as the self made man that really loves his wife. Barbara Stanwyck's character is the center of the plot and she renders an outstanding performance in another of her many "mean woman" roles. Ward Bond and Ruth Roman -Jeff's romantic alternative- are a strong support. There's also Ian McDonald playing one of his usual unsympathetic characters and meeting Cooper again after High Noon (1952).

Blowing Wild is an acceptable product in its kind. You won't miss a great movie if you don't see it, but you'll enjoy it if you do.

Fregonese was a good director, the cast is good ( although Gary Cooper always seemed a bit monotonous and cold ) but Anthony Quinn makes up for him with his own special form of excess. Barbara Stanwyck sadly walks through it as a ' bad woman ' and pulls out all the cliched, familiar gestures of the stereotyped and underwritten ' nasty female '. Ruth Roman has at least a rounded role and acts superbly. and in my opinion saves the film. As for the plot it is overblown and psychologically superficial. But as a superficial film it is watchable and has its fine moments, one of which is a scene between Stanwyck and Roman. I cannot tell what they made of each other, but a film that was theirs would have been great chemistry. The macho feel of the film is tedious and the song which was a great hit in its day that opens the film has a drive to it that the film sometimes follows. It could have been excellent, but falls too often into the excess that only Quinn makes believable. The end is literally hysterical!!!

I remember seeing this as a14 year old in England when it was first released. It has stuck in my mind ever since. The combination of Gary Cooper's world weary persona, Dimitri Tiomkin's evocative score, the great rendition of the title song by Frankie Laine and the powerful sense of loss and what might have been all combine to make a fantastic couple of hours. One thought did occur when I watched it again last night was how old the characters all were... We take it for granted today that most roles are played by 25-35 year old actors (and actresses)that to see Cooper, Stanwyck, Quinn, Bond etc. brings one up with start. Lovely film, though, and I look forward to seeing it again.

This is a far cry from the two undisputed classics which had paired Gary Cooper and Barbara Stanwyck twelve years earlier and Hugo Fregonese is not in the same league as Messrs. Capra and Hawks whilst Philip Yordan's script is way below his best.

The old chemistry between Cooper and Stanwyck is still there of course and as a bonus we have the strong presence of Anthony Quinn, one of Cinema's genuine characters who worked very hard to develop and improve his craft whilst Ruth Roman's subtle sensuality offers a much needed contrast to the film's machismo and Miss Stanwyck's passionate intensity.

The film benefits from Dimitri Tiomkin's score, the cinematography of Sidney Hickox and most particularly its momentum for which editor Alan Crosland merits a special mention. In effect this opus represents a prime example of talented, professional artistes rising above their material.