A DAY OF FURY. Universal, 1956. Dale Robertson, Jock Mahoney, Mara Corday, Jan Merlin and John Dehner. Written by James Edmiston and Oscar Brodney. Directed by Harmon Jones.

   Universal did a lot of Westerns in the 1950s, some of them big-budget productions, but mostly Technicolor B+ (or sometimes A-) features with minor stars like Audie Murphy, Rory Calhoun and Steven McNally. Some are rather good, a couple of them (CURTAIN CALL AT CACTUS CREEKK and Lewton’s APACHE DRUMS) off-beat, but nothing quite as weird as A DAY OF FURY.

   At age Six I found it thoroughly confusing, and sixty years on I find that most viewers still don’t get the subtle parable of the story. Gunfighter Dale Robertson rides on the scene, saves the life of Marshal Jock Mahoney, then proceeds to turn his town upside-down: In the course of one Sunday, the saloon fills up with hookers, a rich man turns pauper and killer, the Preacher incites a riot, the Schoolmarm gets disgraced as a trollop, the pillars of the community jail their Marshal, and that ain’t the half of it.

   All this carnage is presided over with malevolent ease by Robertson, who spends most of the film at a card-table, dealing confusion and disorder all about him. Robertson seems to enjoy the chance to play an out-and-out baddie, and he’s good enough at it that I wish he’d done it more often.

   As his nemesis, Jock Mahoney (my favorite Tarzan) is even more intriguing: impassive, speaking in riddles, and possessed of a serenity even when jailed, that seems almost – dare I say Christ-like?

   It fits. At one point preacher John Dehner calls Robertson a “creature out of Hell” and he certainly leads the townsfolk into outrageous evil. But all the way through, he evinces a vague unease (nice job there, Dale) in Mahoney’s presence that adds to the mysticism of the whole thing.

   Director Harmon Jones is hardly a major auteur of the Cinema, but he did a nice job with CITY OF BAD MEN and THE SILVER WHIP, and we needn’t dwell on GORILLA AT LARGE. Here he tackles a story lacking in action with a moving camera and intriguing set-ups. There’s also a bravura episode with Jan Merlin being chased around town through shifting shadows and charging torch-bearers, like Harry Beaton in BRIGADOON.

   A DAY OF FURY won’t suit action fans, nor those with a taste for wide open spaces, but those with a taste for the unusual may find it intriguing. I did.

   One final observation: Dale Robertson was known as “the left-handed gun,” which director Jones emphasizes in the final shoot-out – making the character literally sinister.