CheerupSilver Very Cool!!!

ReaderKenka Let's be realistic.

Pluskylang Great Film overall

Hayden Kane There is, somehow, an interesting story here, as well as some good acting. There are also some good scenes

malcolmgsw 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.

JohnHowardReid Victor McLaglen's last film finds the actor in fine form, even though he over-acts as usual, and at 97 minutes, this movie does tend to run just a little too long. But keep watching, as it does come to an absolutely stunning climax that is well worth waiting for. Admittedly, that forces viewers to sit through a fair amount of unnecessarily verbose dialogue, which I'm surprised was not trimmed by on again, off again editor, Arthur Stevens. (Stevens had a really bizarre movie career which started way back in 1931 when he edited a one-reel short contrasting humans with monkeys. He did not re-enter the film industry until 1952, when he edited a quota quickie, "The Stolen Plans"). On the other hand, Dermot Walsh is quite striking in his brief cameo, and Miss Luciana Paluzzi makes a delightfully pert and fulsome heroine. On yet another hand, I thought top-billed Stanley Baker no more than adequate. However, it was nice to see Robert Shaw, quietly menacing in a smallish role. The Spanish locations are also an asset and the music score is particularly striking thanks to a nice solo guitar played by Julian Bream.

Robert J. Maxwell 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.

Chase_Witherspoon Victor McLaglen, the captain of a tug boat service forms a misplaced affection for Luciana Paluzzi, her father (Delgado) happy to oblige for a significant dowry and ongoing prestige. Paluzzi, of course, at least thirty-something years McLaglen's junior, isn't so willing to be matrimonially arranged and finds mutual attraction with the newly hired mate, Stanley Baker. The ensuing tension creates friction between those loyal to the embattled skipper, and others swayed by Baker's courage and the prospect of a changing in the guard.McLaglen's final film role is a great individual swansong, but he's a star among a galaxy of gas. Baker's character will draw parallels with that of "Hell Drivers" (another Endfield-Kruse collaboration), as the tough, uncompromising rogue who takes on the establishment for the common man, his highly principled stance diametrically opposed by the hard-line techniques employed by McLaglen. But the transition is by no means seamless, particularly with loyal mates (Shaw, being the most influential) opposing the vanguard. The action sequences are competent, but Paluzzi doesn't evoke enough depth to her characterisation, a role in which perhaps a Sophia Loren or Pier Angeli would have excelled.Fair British supporting cast are merely spectators to the tepid love triangle and Endfield's direction is not as taut or narratively fluent as in "Hell Drivers" (the similarities with which are too obvious to deny and is possibly where "Sea Fury" suffers as a comparison). But for Baker's charisma and McLaglen's jealous-turn invoking equal amounts of scorn and sympathy accordingly, this would be a largely forgettable experience. A solid climax briefly elevates the picture, but not sufficiently to redeem the otherwise soap-operatic storyline from mediocre status. Fair, but far from memorable.