XoWizIama Excellent adaptation.

Chirphymium It's entirely possible that sending the audience out feeling lousy was intentional

ThedevilChoose When a movie has you begging for it to end not even half way through it's pure crap. We've all seen this movie and this characters millions of times, nothing new in it. Don't waste your time.

Logan By the time the dramatic fireworks start popping off, each one feels earned.

JasparLamarCrabb Surely one of the kinkiest westerns that Hollywood has ever presented. Morally bankrupt land baron Walter Huston will do anything to preserve his hold on "the Furies," his highly expansive property. He marries Judith Anderson for her money, alienating clingy daughter Barbara Stanwyck in the process. What ensues is a ruthlessly psychological game of chess between Huston & Stanwyck that does not end well for anyone. High voltage sparks abound between the two stars, heightening the already way over the top drama. Stanwyck burns up the screen with this type of role - hell-bent as all get out and not ashamed to let people know that she'll be stepping on them to get her way. In addition to Anderson, Stanwyck's victims include unsavory saloon owner Wendell Corey, ranch hand/lover Gilbert Roland and John Bromfield as her milquetoast brother. It's all directed at a fevered pitch by Anthony Mann. The overwrought but highly effective music by Franz Waxman is excellent. If Alfred Hitchcock and Sigmund Freud had teamed to come up with a story, it may very well have turned out like this.

J. Spurlin Vance (Barbara Stanwyck) is a firebrand, and that's the way her equally iron-willed father, T.C. Jeffords (Walter Huston), likes her. Certainly the tyrannical cattle rancher cares more for his daughter than his seemingly weak-willed son (John Bromfield), whose wedding is only the ostensible reason for him to end his San Francisco trip earlier than expected and return to The Furies. T.C. needs money, and being something like a feudal lord of the 1870s, all he has to do is print some up: his own money, paper bills called TCs. He also has enough power to drive off the Mexican squatters from his land, but Vance insists he leave the Herrera family alone. She is close friends with the family's eldest son, Juan (John Bromfield), who is in love with her. Vance is in love with nobody until she meets Rip Darrow (Wendell Corey), a flinty gambler who wants back the piece of land he believes rightfully belongs to him. Predictably, father and daughter clash over Rip, but their lively relationship doesn't turn ugly until T.C., who hasn't been serious about a woman since his wife had the effrontery to die, meets an attractive widow (Judith Anderson) who schemes to take control of The Furies herself.Anthony Mann directed this gorgeously photographed black-and-white western with his usual skill at bringing out the psychological complexities of a story and its characters. The big, bold, brash characters zestfully played by Stanwyck and Huston (in his last role) are handled deftly enough to be fascinating without being campy, despite the roiling undercurrent of an incestuous attraction between them. The screenplay is based on a novel by Niven Busch who also wrote the book that became "Duel in the Sun": to see how silly this movie could have been, watch that one.My only complaint is with Franz Waxman, whose score reveals that he either didn't understand the material or was deliberately trying to undermine it. When Vance gives her father a back rub, we're not having the whimsical thoughts Waxman tries to put in our heads.

zetes This Antony Mann Western is little-known compared to his collaborations with James Stewart or Man of the West or a good number of other Mann films, but it's an equal to his best work. Barbara Stanwyck and Walter Huston (in his final performance) star as a daughter and her father, powerful ranchers who own the titular land. Their relationship, much as the title suggests, has a psycho-sexual tinge. When men call on Stanwyck, her father balks. And when hoochies cling to Huston, well, then things get real ugly! The Furies shows Mann bringing a lot of his noir skills to the Western genre. One can easily see how that genre influenced Mann's characterizations, but, in terms of film-making, he had largely moved on. The Furies is just dark and often nasty. I have to wonder why the film is so little known. My thought is that almost all Westerns feature male protagonists, with the most notably exception being Johnny Guitar. I'm not going to rag too much on that film, because I do like it, but The Furies is far superior. Stanwyck was rarely better. I might actually rate this as her best. Huston went out on one of his best performances. It's hard to believe he died before the film was even released with as much energy as he shows. My only real complaint with the movie is that it peaks too early. The standoff at the Herrera's fort is one of the greatest sequences in the history of the genre, and it's so good that the remainder of the film drags a bit. Still, a masterpiece. Thanks again, Criterion!

bengleson This is a good film to watch as autumn turns to winter. It's filled with old hatreds, revenge both old and new, explosive emotions and a subtle intelligence. Walter Huston and Barbara Stanwyck go on a powerful tear as T.C. and Vance Jeffords. There are hints of incest in the complex presentation of the lives of this father and daughter.There, most of all, is a escalating chill that sweeps down into the furies, that freezes hearts and cools ardor.Films like "The Furies", swirl around the omnipotent lives of stern and demanding patriarchs. We await their comeuppance, their downfall. We await it and we regret that these larger then life men fail to hold on to their wealth, their loves, and sometimes their lives. It is a shame that Walter Huston was dead a year before this, his final film was released. His performance is mesmerizing.