Blowing Wild (1953)

To me, this movie is perfection.

Sorry, this movie sucks

Great movie! If you want to be entertained and have a few good laughs, see this movie. The music is also very good,

Actress is magnificent and exudes a hypnotic screen presence in this affecting drama.

I'll tell you the problem with Blowing Wild: the casting. Barbara Stanwyck is married to Anthony Quinn but falls in love with Gary Cooper. Yes, you read that correctly. She's married to the passionate, ruggedly attractive, warm Anthony Quinn, but she'd rather have the wooden, cold, clueless Gary Cooper. It doesn't make any sense, and since that's the main plot of the movie, the movie doesn't make any sense.There's another woman in the picture, Ruth Roman, and while Barbara is clearly drawn out to be the "bad girl", I didn't think Ruth was much better. She meets Gary and immediately tries to con him out of a hundred dollars, then pulls the same scheme on his business partner, Ward Bond. Why are we supposed to root for her instead of Barbara? The love triangles aside, the plot isn't terrible, but the oil rigs and bandits and transportation of nitro bombs aren't really that captivating, since they're given a backseat to the scenes with the ladies. You can give this a shot if you like the cast, but just know you've been warned. I mean, would you cheat on Anthony Quinn with Gary Cooper? I don't know anyone who would.

I have been an avid Turner Classic Movies viewer and cannot recall them ever playing this obscure Gary Cooper film. It's a shame, as it's pretty good. The film is a remake of the Cagney film "Torrid Zone" and it's also a bit similar (at least in the early part of the movie) to "Wages of Fear"...a film that also came out in 1953.Jeff and Dutch (Gary Cooper and Ward Bond) are stuck in Mexico*...broke and with no prospects after bandits dynamite their oil rig. They get a crazy job transporting nitroglycerin but it turns out that the guy hiring them is a crook. Fortunately, at least at first, an old friend, Paco (Anthony Quinn), discovers their plight and hires them. Unfortunately, his wife, Marina (Barbara Stanwyck), is a total screwball...a femme fatale in the most vivid sense. She doesn't appreciate that Paco is handsome, loves her and provides her with anything she wants...she wants Jeff...mostly because it's wrong! What's to come of all this?This is a decent film that gets better later due to Stanwyck's florid character. She's bad...really, really bad...and although she was not the lead, she easily dominated the film. The only negative is that you KNOW what's going to happen to her due to the notion enforced at the time that the evil must ultimately pay. Exciting and well worth seeing.

She is Barbara Stanwyck, the hot-blooded and high maintenance wife of oil rig baron Anthony Quinn, as well as former lover of Gary Cooper, and she is desperate to get rid of a husband she hates and get back a former lover who makes her oil crude. Stanwyck's characters has never been someone you'd see grocery shopping (unless she was plotting a murder with Fred MacMurray) or attending social functions, but here, she is aging but still very much on the prowl. She's definitely a cougar, and while her prey may not be a young buck, she's roaring loudly with desire. Cooper, though, isn't buying her brand of spitfire anymore, and is now ready to settle for the sultriness of Ava Gardner look-alike Ruth Roman who purrs her lines like a kitten compared to Stanwyck's raspy and claw-clad alley cat. Quinn, too, underestimates his wife's hatred, finding out the hard way her real desires.This is the third variation of this story at Warner Brothers-1935's "Bordertown" and 1940's "They Drive By Night", all told extremely similar stories with different professions for the hero and equally wild leading ladies in the Stanwyck role: Bette Davis ("Bordertown") and Ida Lupino ("They Drive By Night") both got to be dames to be reckoned with. Roman takes on the Margaret Lindsay and Ann Sheridan roles with Cooper replacing Paul Muni and George Raft, Quinn taking over for Eugene Palette and Alan Hale.An unusually large over abundance of music dominates this version, including a theme song ("Marina Mine") sung by Frankie Laine, obviously influenced by his hit recording of "Do Not Forsake Me", the theme from Cooper's Oscar Winning success "High Noon" the previous year. Quinn's seemingly macho coward fights cowardice as a result of harassment from Mexican bandits, seen at the start of the film attempting to rob Cooper with stereotypical racist dialog. Ward Bond gives a sympathetic performance as Cooper's mentor. While the romance may focus on Cooper and Roman, it is Stanwyck who dominates the film. She may be melodramatic, but she's somebody you'll never forget.

Blowin Wild is the type of movie you took for granted when originally released and now can appreciate how good it is. Starting with Barbara Stanwick who could play a "femme fatale" better than no one, Anthony Quinn as the good guy's friend, that has a great weakness, a role he also played in Warlock, Quinn was the ideal villain, and Gary Cooper was one of the best heroes ever on the screen. The outstanding Ward Bond and the pretty Ruth Roman complete this fantastic cast. Apart from the ridiculous premise that there are independent small oil operations in South America, this is an excellent western (at least at heart). At certain moments I was reminded of The Wages of Fear (Le Salaire de la Peur, 1953, others of The Treasure of the Sierra Madre(1948). There is a great scene when Barbara Stanwick and Ruth Roman confront each other.