Watch Son of Fury: The Story of Benjamin Blake For Free

Very very predictable, including the post credit scene !!!

Highly Overrated But Still Good

This is one of the few movies I've ever seen where the whole audience broke into spontaneous, loud applause a third of the way in.

Exactly the movie you think it is, but not the movie you want it to be.

An entertaining tale of Tyrone Power, cheated out of his birthright by the villainous George Sanders. Power becomes Sanders' ward, and Sanders beats and humiliates him. Power assaults him -- a grave offense, a commoner knocking a rich aristocrat around -- and barely escapes hanging by stowing aboard a sailing ship that brings him to a Polynesian island like Tahiti. There he meets the delicious Gene Tierney in a flowery two-piece sarong. Who could resist? When he's collected enough pearls to ransom a king, he returns to England, hires a lawyer who deposes Sanders, and assumes his rightful place as lord of the manor. Sanders is now a commoner himself, though still capable of a sly trick or two in his attempt to continue in the life style to which he's become accustomed. There is a brutal fist fight. Sanders fights dirty. All villains fight dirty in these scuffles. But Power wins, gives the manor to the servants and to his kindly grandfather. Then he takes off again, trading the corruption of civilization for the simple life among the noble savages, the sheltering palms, not to mention the sheltering arms of Gene Tierney. Jean-Jacques Rousseau can be heard faintly, applauding from just off camera.It's one of those tales we don't see much anymore, based on a sprawling, epic, now-forgotten novel. Nobody seems to have patience enough to read these long tales of adventure and romance. Maybe James Michener was the last of the breed.Tyrone Power is a passable adventurer, Twentieth-Century Fox's answer to Warner's Errol Flynn. He's aided considerably by Alfred Newman's heroic score, Twentieth-Century Fox's answer to Warner's Eric Wolfgang Korngold. Gene Tierney had little range as an actress, even though, as here, she was forced to be a sexy and naive native girl or, elsewhere, a dumb and hungry redneck. She's out of her depth. She needs to be in sleek clothes in New York, as she was in "Laura" and "Leave Her To Heaven." Best performance award goes to -- envelope, please -- yes, George Sanders as Sir Arthur Blake, snooty and sadistic aristocrat. He's never been a better cad. Oh, to see him sit at court, while Tyrone Power is humiliated and about to be sent to the gallows, and Sanders lolls back in his seat, looking down his nose like William F. Buckley, and rolling his eyes heavenward. The guy was great.

SON OF FURY is one of the most fondly remembered adventure films from Hollywood's Golden Age. Produced by William Perlberg for 20th Century Fox in 1942 it was directed with a positive flair by John Cromwell. Based on the classic novel by Edison Marshall it had a cracking screenplay by Philip Dunne and the perfect leading man in handsome Tyrone Power who was still enjoying the great success of his popular pirate swashbuckler "The Black Swan" released just prior to this. SON OF FURY is also notable for an excellent performance from the ill-fated Francis Farmer who plays the spoilt and priggish daughter of slimy villain George Saunders. Farmer looks quite lovely in the picture and is probably her best remembered role.Ty Power is in his element as the young Benjamin Blake in the early part of the nineteenth century seeking restitution after being cheated out of his proper inheritance by his roguish uncle (Saunders). As a boy he becomes his bond servant and grows into manhood in a cruelly treated existence. But after a fierce beating and many other indignities under the uncle's tutelage he flees home. He joins a ship sailing for the South Seas and with a colleague (John Carradine) jumps ship and comes ashore on an exotic Polynesian island. After some time he meets and falls in love with a beautiful Polynesian girl (Gene Tierney). Some years pass and after amassing a fortune in pearls he returns to England. He hires a lawyer (Dudley Diggs) who clears his name (in an excellent courtroom scene) and restores his rightful inheritance much to the chagrin of his uncle resulting in a well staged fist fight between Power and Saunders (an interesting analogy - some 15 years later in a fight scene with the same two actors while filming "Solomon & Sheba" (1959)- Tyrone Power would die on set from a massive heart attack. He was only 44 years old!) SON OF FURY ends with him returning to the island and taking up where he left off with the native girl.This is my only complaint about the movie - the casting of Gene Tierney as a Polynesian native girl! She doesn't look Polynesian nor native! She looks just like Laura in a grass skirt on holiday on a South Sea island!Gloriously photographed in black & white by the great Arthur Miller the picture is also buoyed by a terrific score by Alfred Newman featuring a great swashbuckling main theme and an arresting love motif for the picture's softer moments. Newman's score can be enjoyed for its own merits isolated on the DVD's audio track. Also on the disc is a featurette about Power with a nice contribution from the director's son - modern character actor James Cromwell.In 1953 Fox remade the picture - this time in Technicolor - and called it "Treasure Of The Golden Condor" starring Cornel Wilde and Constance Smith but it had only minor success. Unlike the splendid SON OF FURY it is now virtually forgotten!

If Son of Fury were the title of a paperback novel, we'd expect a bodice-ripping, heavy- breathing Regency romance. What we have is a highly professional Darryl F. Zanuck adventure of surprising innocence and charm. Everything about the movie, from the actors to the script to the cinematography, features such a high level of craftsmanship that the few corny moments pass quickly. Please note that elements of the plot are discussed. During the reign of George III, Benjamin Blake (Tyrone Power) is thought to have been born on the wrong side of the blanket, leaving his father's rich, titled inheritance to Ben's wicked uncle, Sir Arthur Blake (George Sanders), now baronet and the master of Breetholm Manor. Benjamin as a boy (Roddy McDowell) had been raised by his kindly grandfather until Sir Arthur at last located him. Sir Arthur is taking no chances about that inheritance and turns Ben into a stable hand on the estate. But Ben, now grown into a man, hates his uncle and has eyes for his uncle's daughter, Isabel (Frances Farmer), a young woman we fear may have inherited her father's nasty ways. Ben rebels, fights Sir Arthur and is whipped, then flees and catches a ship from England. He learns from a shipmate of a South Seas island where oyster pearls practically cover the ocean floor. By trickery they escape the ship, are accepted by the natives, dive for a fortune in pearls, and Ben meets a lovely young native woman. He names her Eve (Gene Tierney). Then it's back to England to hire a lawyer, save his grandfather from debtor's prison, win a court fight to reclaim his inheritance, give Sir Arthur a beating and learn the tricky nature of Isabel. What's left for a rich young man? Well, one thing would be to turn his estates and wealth over to all those loyal workers, then show up unexpectedly at that South Seas island and run across the sand to embrace Eve. The story, even as predictable as this, is told with such professional attention to naivety that we cheer for Ben, hiss his uncle, and even find the unlikely conclusion satisfying. Three things make this movie work as well as it does. First, is the script. The story is one set of clichés after another, yet the script doesn't wink at us or assume we're too simple-minded to notice. It treats Ben and the people he meets with matter-of-fact story-telling that doesn't dawdle over the kisses or make too big a thing over the beatings. In other words, the script keeps the story moving. Second, are the actors. Tyrone Power, in my view, often was too earnest for his own good. But here that earnestness is just right for Benjamin Blake's character. Power's handsomeness also works. At 32, he still has that youthfulness that quickly turned into maturity after his World War II years. There also are plenty of opportunities for Power to be bare-chested in this movie. It's reassuring to see a movie star with a reasonably good build who doesn't display the current style of inflatable pecs from too many visits by a personal trainer. And has there ever been so accomplished a condescending villain than George Sanders? His Sir Arthur is unprincipled, self-satisfied and dangerous. He proves he's no coward when it comes to fist-fighting. John Carradine plays Caleb Green, the sailor Benjamin joins to find pearls. Carradine was a fine actor, as lean as a green bean who all too quickly learned a good paycheck could come as easily from self-caricature as from acting. He plays a good guy here, a true friend of Ben's and a man who discovers he can be happy with what he has. There are many other memorable characters...Elsa Lancaster as a prostitute with a heart of gold, another cliché but Lancaster turns the woman into someone we hope has a future...Dudley Diggs, so ripe and forgotten now, as the lawyer Bartholomew Pratt and Benjamin's deus ex machina...Frances Farmer, beautiful and calculating, who lets us know when she's aroused by breathing through her mouth...Harry Davenport as Ben's aged grandfather, kindness itself...and Roddy McDowell as young Ben. He was one of the best of Hollywood's child actors and is completely believable here. Gene Tierney was a lovely but, in my view, limited actress. She's great to look at, though, whether diving for pearls or leading a hip-swiveling dance accompanied by drums and grunts. Third, is the production values Zanuck lavished on the film. The dollars Zanuck spent all show up on the screen, with impressive sets ranging from the elaborate Breetholm Manor, including a ballroom full of lavishly dressed aristos pointing their toes, to a desperate debtor's prison, from the courts of justice to the idyllic island paradise. The black and white cinematography is outstanding. The camera lingers over the carefully lit Gene Tierney almost as often as it does over Tyrone Power.

Those who claim Elizabeth Taylor and Montgomery Clift were the screen's all-time most beautiful couple apparently have never seen Tyrone Power and Gene Tierney. SON OF FURY is a wonderful multi-genre picture that goes from British period piece to South Seas romance quite smoothly. The film's plot has been well-explained by multiple IMDb members so I'll just concentrate on the performances.The entire cast does fine work. Gene Tierney doesn't appear until a full hour as passed and her role doesn't require much except smiling and looking utterly beautiful and that she does to perfection. George Sanders (looking amazingly like John Wayne in the early scenes) has one of his most brutally villainous roles and he plays it without flinching, this is no character you love to hate, he's one scary SOB. This major 1942 film is also notable for giving breaks to two actresses who had been brushed off by many in Hollywood, the troubled Frances Farmer who plays Sanders' daughter (and Power's first love) and early talkie star Kay Johnson, making a very rare appearance, as Sander's wife. John Carradine has one of his most likable roles as a seedy castaway who turns out to be a great friend. There's also an exceptional performance from Harry Davenport (best known as Doc Meade from GONE WITH THE WIND) as Power's beloved grandfather.And I've saved the best for last, the one, the only Tyrone Power. Was there ever a more gorgeous man in movies? And SON OF FURY fairly revels in his beauty, his beautiful mop of thick black hair, his stunning profile, manly arms, friendly eyes and infectious smile. And as a bonus, there are numerous scenes of Power shirtless, running around the island in sarong-like swim-shorts. To top it all off, Tyrone is a fantastic actor, one of classic Hollywood's best. He would have been a superstar in any era.