Sea Fury (1958)

Firstly can I make the point that although this site shows Baker as top billed it is Mclaglen who was top billed and the name above the title.Mclaglen was an actor who was rarely capable of giving a restrained performance.He needed someone of the calibre of John Ford in getting him to be more restrained.Here he is rather odd because he lusts after a woman young enough to be his granddaughter.Difficult to know whether the director was serious about suggesting this romance.Anyway all the action is reserved for the climax which involves Stanley Baker.IThe end of a long career for Victor.

SEA FURY is a British slice of seafaring drama that sees Stanley Baker (a ubiquitous presence in British cinema of the 1950s) joining the crew of a tugboat that spends a lot of time searching for stricken vessels to claim the salvage rights to. Unfortunately, for the majority of the running time this plays out as a romantic melodrama, and as such it's occasionally turgid and rather long-winded. Baker falls for the voluptuous charms of Luciana Paluzzi (and who can blame him?) but salty sea-dog Victor McLaglen also has his sights on here.Thankfully the film does pick up for a thoroughly suspenseful climax involving a cargo of dangerous chemicals on an abandoned ship in a storm, and Baker really comes into his own at this point; it's just a pity it takes so long to get to this point. Still, the film is worth watching if for no other reason to see an excellent supporting cast at play. Keep your eyes open for the likes of Robert Shaw, Francis De Wolff, Joe Robinson, Percy Herbert, Rupert Davies, Roger Delgado, Barry Foster, and Dermot Walsh, many of them appearing long before they became famous.

Nice, sharp black and white photography of Cataluna, Spain. It provides a colorful background for this story of two sailors -- McLaglen and Baker -- competing for the affections of Luciana Paluzzi, which are well worth competing for.McLaglen is the blustering skipper of a rescue tug that makes its living by salvaging ships that are in distress. It's a familiar role for him. He gets to booze it up a lot and throw things around and look broody when he's disappointed.Paluzzi is a local senhorita in the Portugese port out of which McLaglen and has half dozen crewmen operate. Her father is a Macher and tries to arrange an affair between her and McLaglen. Her Dad is some nice guy, full of hypothetical imperatives. After all, he reasons, McLaglen is old and has never been married and when he kicks it, his money and his assets must go to his wife. How can you argue with that? Paluzzi is reluctantly drawn into his scheme. But then Stanley Baker arrives, handsome, young, virile, and applies for a job as a deck hand with McLaglen. He has his First Mate's certificate but he's hard up for a job. McLaglen strikes up a friendship with him and hires him.Inevitably, Baker and Paluzzi fall for one another behind McLaglen's back. The dialog is unimpeachable but the logic behind the characters is a little murky. Here is Paluzzi, pretty and virginal, and after meeting Baker and chatting with him two or three times, she takes him to the top of a nearby mountain, teases him into making a move on her, then throws herself into his arms and murmurs, "Love me! Love me!" Well, this happens to me all the time, but I don't see Baker having such an effect on the luscious Paluzzi. When it comes to pheromones, you either have them or you don't -- and Baker don't.Poor McLaglen. We know immediately that he's not going to get Paluzzi. If he did, what would he do with her? He was in his 70s when this was shot and he looks it. The comic/brutish face is still there but the eyes are puffy and the shoulders seem shrunk. His torso is bulky but shapeless and sagging. Baker is always outfitted in tight turtle necks and other glam devices.Cy Enfield was the director. They should have given it to someone else. It's one of the few movies in which the direction is really so poor that it draws attention to itself. If you doubt it, just watch the scene in which Paluzzi is changing clothes behind a screen and McLaglen is trying to keep himself from peeping. It's played with complete sincerity. And there must be half a dozen cuts between garments dropping down Paluzzi's shapely calves and McLaglen doing his best to seem in an approach/avoidance conflict. Terribly done.At the climax, Baker leaps aboard a listing ship in a storm. The ship's cargo includes metallic sodium, which is highly dangerous stuff. I won't describe it but the scene is quite well done and full of tension. It would have been nice, though, if instead of ordering, "Shoot the towline," McLaglen had given the more proper order to "shoot the messenger line," because that's what they do.A nice supporting cast -- Barry Foster, Robert Shaw, et al -- make up for a not-unwatchable story of competition at sea and on the beach. It could have been better.

Victor McLaglen's last feature film found him trying to romance Luciana Paluzzi. McLaglen's a salvage tug captain and he's going through an end life crisis romancing young Luciana Paluzzi who's young enough to be his granddaughter. Seems that her father Roger Delgado, an innkeeper in a North Spain sea village, would like to get his daughter fixed up with a comfortable situation for both of them. He encourages her flirtations with McLaglen. But she's got eyes for Stanley Baker who's a member of McLaglen's crew.What saves this film is the action sequences on the high seas, especially Stanley Baker risking life and limb to dump a steel drum of lethal sodium during a storm, on board a listing freighter. Reason enough to see this film. There's also a bit of rivalry between Baker and another member of McLaglen's crew, Robert Shaw. Shaw and Baker both went on to solid careers as tough leading men. Baker never got quite the acclaim that Shaw did internationally, but he was good box office in Great Britain.Roger Delgado was best known in the British TV series Doctor Who for originating the role of the Doctor's number one nemesis, the Master. Death in an automobile crash in 1973 cut short a very good career.Watch it for the action sequences.