This film's sole claim to fame is as the last big screen appearance of vetern actor Victor McLaglen. His character, Bellew, is an aging tugboat captain working out of a Spanish port on the Bay of Biscay. His eye is taken - and who could blame him - by the beautiful young Josita (Lucianna Paluzzi). Her father - whom the value-system of her time and place tells her she must obey - wants her to encourage him. When she objects to the idea of marrying an old man he tells her that, because he's old, Bellew won't last long. When she inherits his wealth she can provide her father with a small pension, take the rest and go to live in Madrid or Barcelona and marry for love. Unsurprisingly Josita is more taken with Abel (Stanley Baker), a young sailor whom Bellew had taken under his wing. Much of the film is taken up with this unremarkable love/lust triangle. By far the best part is a well-done action sequence where the tugboat's crew try to salvage a ship carrying a dengerous cargo. A solid cast includes such guture stars as Barry Foster, Robert Shaw, Rupert Davies.

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.

SEA FURY is a British slice of seafaring drama that sees Stanley Baker (a ubiquitous presence in British cinema of the 1950s) joining the crew of a tugboat that spends a lot of time searching for stricken vessels to claim the salvage rights to. Unfortunately, for the majority of the running time this plays out as a romantic melodrama, and as such it's occasionally turgid and rather long-winded. Baker falls for the voluptuous charms of Luciana Paluzzi (and who can blame him?) but salty sea-dog Victor McLaglen also has his sights on here.Thankfully the film does pick up for a thoroughly suspenseful climax involving a cargo of dangerous chemicals on an abandoned ship in a storm, and Baker really comes into his own at this point; it's just a pity it takes so long to get to this point. Still, the film is worth watching if for no other reason to see an excellent supporting cast at play. Keep your eyes open for the likes of Robert Shaw, Francis De Wolff, Joe Robinson, Percy Herbert, Rupert Davies, Roger Delgado, Barry Foster, and Dermot Walsh, many of them appearing long before they became famous.

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.