Tormenta de Fogo

Dennis Morgan and William Talman strike uranium. While Talman stands guard. Morgan goes to register the claim. He meets Patricia Medina, woos her and marries her. When he brings her out to the mine, it turns out Talman was already in love with her. He walks out.

It's the sort of movie that had already been made many times, usually with a setting of wildcat oil drillers. The principals are as good as you might expect, but given producer Sam Katzman, there are no frills in the production, and the ending seems to settle things up oddly quickly.

It was Morgan's last movie; Talman would settle into a long run on television losing cases to Raymond Burr's Perry Mason. With Philip van Zandt, Tina Carver and Frank Wilcox.

I am adding reviews for all films I've seen that currently lack one, this I have just seen today, review follows... 'Two guys team up to stake a claim during a Uranium strike, they find a claim, one guy minds the find, the other goes to town to file the claim, when he returns he has married his partners girl! Its rather daft, and there are many unlikely events, but it's fast moving and fun to watch at little over the hour mark.' I caught it as it's a W.Castle film, can't say I'm familiar with any of the cast members. As I need to 'pad' I would add that I think you can see here examples of the W.Castle style that he would let rip in his horror films, he was a showman, and this is a 'showy' film, I think W.Castle completists will enjoy.

I did not know that the greedy awful producer Sam Katzman was involved in such adventures dramas, for which I expected the worst of the worst. But I was very surprised to find here a rather acceptable, however flat and uninspired, but never awful junk to watch. It is not a crap, only no ambition is revealed here, nor from the producer - Katzman - or director William Castle whose work is bland at the most. William Castle has given us much much better in his pre horror part of his career. It is a rare film though, hard to find from William Castle for whom there are still fans; But I warn you, it is totally forgettable. Fun, not really boring but forgettable.

The writer and director of this film tried to rekindle the atmosphere of San Francisco with Spencer Tracy and Clark Gable. That film was a rouser. This one is a dud. There are more holes in this script than a golf course in Florida. The indian character, Charlie, is one-dimensional, Morgan is annoyingly suffering from megalomania, Talman is suffering from self-delusion about the love of the female lead, who loves neither of the two men; she just loves being in the movie, and there are several pots left boiling on the stove. For example, a mean gang at the start of film is never heard from again, we don't know how Talman met his romantic interest, we don't know why people did not do proper research before spending a few million dollars on a get richer quicker scheme, when they were already wealthy and comfortable, and we don't know how an Italian restaurant came to be in the middle of the desert (although it would make a fortune as one of the few places to get a decent meal). Watch at your own peril.

What should have been a scathing critique of cut-throat capitalism emerges as a very dull and cliched B-picture from Sam Katzman over at Columbia Pictures, designed to bore the hell out of a "I'll sit through anything audience" of the '50s. William Castle as director is on auto-pilot throughout, yet to discover his niche as a gimmickry king.

The story is creaky and with some very poor dialogue at times, not believable. Two guys meet, fight, become partners as Colorado uranium prospectors, fall for the same girl, bombshell Patricia Medina, become enemies and climax the film with another fist-fight, a rushed reconciliation and ridiculous happy ending, "sharing" (not sexually) Medina to ride off into the sunset. It's phony throughout, pulling punches at every turn in order to earn a double-G rating I suppose.

There were many, many roadblocks along the way to interfere with my enjoyment of a simple, old-fashioned piece of escapism. It's hard to imagine weaker heroes than Dennis Morgan and William Talman -both are playing either bad good guys or good bad guys -take your pick. Early on is Dutch actor Philip Van Zandt, a familiar bit player. With darkened-up makeup (not blackface but serving a similar purpose) he plays their cheerful Indian sidekick, pleasant racism on the half shell. He's about as convincing as would be casting Steven Van Zandt as an Indian, except Steven has that bandana and a scowl to help him get into character.

Then there's a beautiful young blonde named Sue introduced being friendly to Morgan in an early scene, immediately to disappear from the show. She gets no screen credit, and no eagle-eyed IMDb-er has yet identified the actress and submitted her name (uncredited).

After their Yellow Rock mine hits it big, Morgan inexplicably turns into a cut-throat, acquisitive capitalist, squeezing out all the little miners to try and build an empire worthy of John D. Rockefeller. Leader of the nice-guy indies is Henry Rowland, odd casting as he's a wonderful heavy (adept at portraying Nazis), who a decade later became a regular in Russ Meyer's wonderful softcore action movies. Here he's a bland good guy.

Then we have an effective femme fatale type, blonde Tina Carver, cast as a hired hand from Talman to undo his now-enemy Morgan both financially and matrimonially, as Morgan has married Medina. She should have been exciting, but her role is poorly written and squeaky-clean.

I grew up with Edward G. Robinson as my favorite actor, watching all his "defeated by hubris" classics from Warner Brothers on the late show, notably "Silver Dollar", "Smart Money" and especially "I Loved a Woman". "Uranium Boom" follows the pattern but muffs it. The "get rich" version of the American Dream in this film is fake and unenlightening.