The unemployed Howard Tyler (Frank Lovejoy) is desperate for a job since he is married with children and his wife Judy (Kathleen Ryan) is pregnant. When he meets the "bon vivant" Jerry Slocum (Lloyd Bridges), the stranger offers a job position to Howard. Soon he learns that Jerry is a small-time thief and his job would be to drive the getaway car after the heist. Howard improves the life of his family and tells that he is working in the night shift of a factory. Meanwhile, the journalist Gil Stanton (Richard Carlson) that works in a tabloid is assigned by the owner to promote the thefts to increase the selling of newspaper. When Jerry kidnaps the son of a millionaire, he brutally kills the man and forces Howard to help him to dump the corpse in the sea. Then he asks for ransom to the family. When the boy is found, Stanton incites the population telling that the abductors are monsters. When Howard and Jerry are arrested, a mob threatens their lives in front of the police station. How will the police officers protect the prisoners?"The Sound of Fury" is a film with a simple storyline and an impressive conclusion. The manipulation of the masses by the "brown press" (tabloid) to sell newspapers is impressive and the consequence is scary. The reaction of the uncontrollable violent mob is the best part of this movie and shows the power of the free press, for the good or for the bad. My vote is seven.Title (Brazil): "Justiça Injusta ("Justice Unjust")

Despite a catch-penny tile, "Try and Get Me" (aka Sound of Fury) remains a truly frightening movie whose disturbing imagery lingers long after the voice-over reassurances subside. The director, Cy Endfield, was one of the lower profile victims of the Mc Carthy purges. Viewing this movie now, it's easy to see why. Family man and returning vet Howard Tyler (played by the always low-key Frank Lovejoy) is recruited into a life of crime by no more than ordinary desires for the American Dream. Desperate and unemployed, he falls into the clutches of a swaggering stickup man superbly played by a preening Lloyd Bridges. (Notice how subtly Bridges bends Tyler to his will on their first meeting at the bowling alley.) Joining Bridges, Tyler finally gets the standing he desires, but the spiral he has entered dooms him and his family's share of America's promise. (Note that conspicuous among the lynch mob's vanguard are fraternity boys, true to the actual event on which the movie is based.) Throughout, the lighting and photography effectively undermine the facile voice of reason that the producers probably felt obligated to include. Endfield may have wanted an anti- violence film, but the resulting visual landscape implies a world of endemic violence. A sense of powerlessness pervades the film, one that mere admonishments cannot overcome. As a result, the characters appear caught in some terrible metaphysical web from which there is no escape. Events march relentlessly on to a conclusion that remains one of the most harrowing in Hollywood history. This is film noir at its darkest and most frightening. Something should be noted in passing about the compellingly exotic performance of Katherine Locke as Hazel the manicurist. Watch her facial expressions as this highly repressed plain-faced woman experiences yet one more rejection in what a paste-on smile shows to be a lifetime of rejections. Never has a blossom perched so precariously on a cheap hairdo conveyed as much lower-class longing as hers, while the car ride with a guilt-ridden Tyler could serve as tawdry inspiration for a dozen feminist tracts. What ever became of this unusual actress, I wonder. Without doubt, however, the film's dramatic high point is the lynch mob. It's one of the most coldly unnerving 20 minutes in movie annals, far surpassing (in my view) the better-known Fury (1936) in its depiction of mass violence. The fact that the mob is made up of ordinary citizens brought to fever pitch is especially telling. Unthinking violence is thus shown as potentially present in us all. At the same time, the screenplay refuses to take the easy way out. In fact, Howard and Jerry are guilty, unlike, say, the three unfortunate cowboys in The Oxbow Incident (1943). Thus, what repels us is not the fact that innocent men are killed for a crime they didn't commit. That would be too easy. Instead, I think we're unnerved by how the crowd appears to celebrate the brutality of vigilante justice. Endfield succeeds in making this aspect especially ugly. Yes, in a very general sense, justice is served—murderers are in fact punished for their crime—but if so, justice is served in a particularly barbaric way even if the act does have popular support. In my little book, Endfield has fashioned the most effective of all anti- lynching movies, in part because it doesn't take the easy way out.That Endfield exiled himself to England and a conventional career with Stanley Baker, shows how much was lost among those purge victims whose disappearance, unlike many others, went generally unnoticed. Just a couple of years after the remarkable "Try and Get Me" (and Endfield's also provocative "Underworld Story"), Hollywood began sanitizing the screen with the escapism of period spectacles, Technicolor westerns, and full-cleavage sex goddesses. Indeed times had changed. As Endfield already knew, the studios had to fight the Cold War too. There would be no more thought-provoking Try and Get Me's.

Lloyd Bridges always gives good value whether as a complete villain, as here, or as a hero- remember Sea Hunt? Sea Hunt was my favourite TV series when I was an impressionable kid. I also loved him in the Airplane movies, showing a real talent for comedy. He is the best thing in this B movie. Most of the other actors I am sure were not professionals and Frank Lovejoy was not up to par either and usually I have quite liked his performances. I am watching it as I type this and am far from impressed by it - brave treatment of a dark subject or no. The actress who plays the manicurist is close to appallingly bad. Where were the razzies when we needed them? I am interested enough to see it through ,however, so it cannot be quite as bad as I am painting it. There are lots of film noir movies from this era that were so much better. This could have been superb with a better, more able cast (Lloyd Bridges aside). I think a lot of this was dubbed later so it affects the acting and atmosphere.

This is a true sleeper in the film noir category, because so few people saw it in original distribution. There was a legal dispute caused by the original title, "Sound of Fury" which some felt was too close to Fritz Lang's "Fury" filmed earlier.Much of this picture was filmed in Phoenix, and the old city courthouse is very prominent, with it's beautiful copper doors. A true 'dive' nightclub, the "La Jolla Club" later known as the "Guys and Dolls" was used for a key scene.Lloyd Bridges showed his wonderful range and capability as a wild-eyed psycho, and Lovejoy was tragically sympathetic as a tortured regular guy gone terribly wrong. The cast was very strong.This is on a par with any of the noir films of the late 40s-early 50s, and holds up today.Enjoy!