Try and Get Me [Blu-ray]

Director: Cy Endfield Cy Endfield

Overview

The Sound of Fury is better known by its general release title, Try and Get Me. Based on Jo Pagano's novel The Condemned, the film recreates a dismal chapter in American history. In 1933, the otherwise peace-loving citizens of San Jose, CA, were stirred up by blind hatred into forming a mob and lynching two accused kidnappers (this same incident was fictionalized in the 1935 Fritz Lang film Fury). Frank Lovejoy and Lloyd Bridges play a couple of down-and-outers who kidnap a wealthy youngster in hopes of getting a huge ransom. Things go terribly wrong, and the boy is killed. When the two kidnappers are arrested, a local journalist (Richard Carlson) inflames the populace with a series of hate-filled articles about the two prisoners. The journalist then stands by in mute horror as he watches the terrible results of his irresponsible print campaign.

Product Details

Release Date:	04/19/2016
UPC:	0887090119504
Original Release:	1950
Rating:	NR
Source:	Olive
Region Code:	A
Presentation:	[B&W]
Language:	English
Time:	1:32:00
Sales rank:	22,128

Cast & Crew

Performance Credits

Frank Lovejoy	Howard Tyler
Lloyd Bridges	Jerry Slocum
Kathleen Ryan	Judy Tyler
Katherine Locke	Hazel
Richard Carlson	Gil Stanton
Adele Jergens	Velma
Art Smith	Hal Clendenning
Renzo Cesana	Dr. Simone
Irene Vernon	Helen Stanton
Cliff Clark	Sheriff Demig
Carl Kent	Donald Miller
Donald Smelick	Tommy Tyler
Dabbs Greer	Mike
Mack Williams	Prof. Martin
Jane Easton	Barbara Colson
John Pelletti	Herb Colson
Mary Lawrence	Kathy
Lynn Gray	Vi Clendenning

Technical Credits

Jo Pagano

Cy Endfield	Director
Robert Stillman	Producer
Jo Pagano	Screenwriter

Editorial Reviews

Director Cy Endfield -- who would shortly decamp Hollywood for the somewhat more friendly surroundings of England, owing to his alleged "leftist" sympathies -- outdid himself in this independent production (originally released by United Artists). Actually, Endfield and the entire cast rose to the occasion in their work on this still-very-troubling film, based on an actual lynching that took place in California in 1933. Endfield and screenwriter Jo Pagano (adapting his own book) weave together two stories -- one about an ambitious journalist (Richard Carlson) who, true to the lowest order of his profession, latches on to a relatively routine crime story and creates a mood of panic and fear; and the other about a poor, unemployed working stiff (Frank Lovejoy) who teams up with a two-bit hood (Lloyd Bridges) for a series of robberies that escalate to kidnapping and murder. Lovejoy was seldom more sympathetic than he is here, as a man who is in over his head from the first moment we see him on-screen. And Lloyd Bridges gives one of his finest early performances, as a petty criminal whose darkest side is just waiting to burst forth. But as good as most of the acting is, Try And Get Me is really a director's movie, relying on atmosphere as much as performances to make its point -- the film weaves a grim picture of postwar America, that runs counter to a lot of extant accounts of the period. Endfield's handling of the last section of the movie, a harrowing public insurrection against law-and-order and the police, is no less gripping six decades later, and these sequences and all of the exterior shots have a documentary-like, neo-realist look that only enhances the impact of everything we see and hear. (And Endfield's treatment of the actual siege of the county jail, looked at today, seems almost like a dry-run for the director's work in Zulu a dozen or so years later). This is not a movie that anyone forgets easily, and in some ways outdoes the impact of Fritz Lang's treatment of the same incident, in Fury (1935).

All Movie Guide - Bruce Eder