Easily the biggest piece of Right wing non sense propaganda I ever saw.

Through painfully honest and emotional moments, the movie becomes irresistibly relatable

Just intense enough to provide a much-needed diversion, just lightweight enough to make you forget about it soon after it’s over. It’s not exactly “good,” per se, but it does what it sets out to do in terms of putting us on edge, which makes it … successful?

Great movie. Not sure what people expected but I found it highly entertaining.

Cornel Wilde produced, directed and starred, and wife Jean Wallace co-starred in this gripping hostage drama. This was I believe Wilde's first attempt at producing/directing.A wounded Charlie Blake (Wilde) and his cohorts Benjie, a psychopath (Steven Hill in his debut) and Edna Rogers (Lee Grant) Charlie's dumb blonde "travelling companion" are on the run and take refuge in Charlie's brother's isolated mountain side farm. The brother Fred (Dan Duryea) is a sickly unsuccessful writer, who lives with his wife Elizabeth (Wallace) and son David (David Stollery) on the farm. They also employ a hired hand, Hank (Dennis Weaver) who happens to be away when the group arrives.A snow storm ensues, isolating the gang for the time being. We learn that Charlie and Elizabeth have a past and although she believes him to be no good, still carries the torch for him. Benjie begins to bully Fred and the family until Charlie intervenes.When Fred sneaks away to find help, Charlie decides that the gang must flee as the storm subsides. He employs young David to lead them across a mountain pass to the highway to avoid the police in pursuit. Meanwhile Hank returns from town drunk and professes his love for Elizabeth and her son. He then sets off after Charlie and his gang.Several events befall the gang in their attempt to escape until Hank catches up and......................................................Cornel Wilde does a creditable job as the lead character showing compassion and toughness as appropriate. Jean Wallace, his "favorite" leading lady is surprisingly good as the beleaguered wife torn between the two brothers. Dan Duryea in an offbeat role, is excellent as the sickly Fred. However it is a very young Steven Hill who stands out as the slightly mad Benjie. Wilde's decision to cast Lee Grant was a gamble as she had been blacklisted by Hollywood as a result of the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) in the early fifties. She makes the best of her role as the flakey blonde. Young David Stollery plays the son caught between his parents and "Uncle" Charlie with conviction.The budget restraints are obvious but don't really detract from the film's effectiveness. Most of the story takes place in the small farm house with it's sparse furnishings and coal oil lamps which gives the film an interesting atmosphere. The trek through the snow at the film's climax brings out the conflicts within the group and heightens the hopelessness of their situation.Comparable to a point with "The Desperate Hours" with Bogart and March released around the same time.

Cornel Wilde who preferred to chart his own course in independent film making as opposed to going to television as so many of his contemporaries were doing made a fine one with Storm Fear. As per usual his wife Jean Wallace joined in the endeavor. It must have been good for him as well as financing for his movies to have a leading lady instantly available.In this film Wilde is a nominal bad guy. A charming bank robber at least as far as the women are concerned. At least as far as Jean Wallace is concerned as they had a son together, but it was Wilde's older brother Dan Duryea, a would be novelist who married Wallace and carried on the fiction that he was David Stollery's father. They live in a remote area of one of our Rocky Mountain states.Wilde's just robbed a bank and he and his two surviving accomplices, Lee Grant and Steven Hill head for the Duryea-Wallace farm as a hideout and to recuperate as Wilde was shot in the holdup. Of course while they're there Duryea spots some sparks between Wilde and Wallace. Wilde who directed as well as played the lead got some complex emotions out of his players. He's a bad guy, but still charming in his own way and protects his family from what a psychotic Steven Hill might do. Wallace is still in love with Wilde, but knows full well what a charming liar he is. Duryea is a decent, but inadequate man who knows he's been a failure far from his usual variety of psychotic villains.Before Kirk Douglas's more celebrated breaking of the blacklist with hiring Dalton Trumbo for the Spartacus screenplay, Wilde did some blacklist breaking of his own in hiring Lee Grant in what turned out to be only her second feature film. Grant does very well in a role that calls for her to be a good natured gangster's moll who meets with a tragic end. In fact the most straight forward part in the film is that played by Dennis Weaver as the hired hand on the Duryea-Wallace farm who goes chasing the robbers.Wilde assembled a fine supporting cast to support him as an actor and his vision as producer/director. One reason he could hire Lee Grant was because he was producer of Storm Fear which was released by United Artists. He created a real winner here.

Gangster Cornell Wilde and his small-minded sidekick Adam Schiff -- I mean Steven Hill -- show up unexpectedly with a bag of loot at the remote farm house of his big brother, the failed writer Dan Duryea, and his blond hausfrau Jean Wallace. Their child, David Stollery, is a witness to the conflicts, arguments, violence, deaths, and general mishigas that takes place during the visit. Dennis Weaver has a small part as the good neighbor.The screenplay was by Horton Foote, the direction by Wilde, and the cast and crew professionally competent, with some exceptions. The result is almost a stage play in which fierce disagreements take place.Wilde does adequately by the part of the tough guy who genuinely doesn't want to intrude but has no place else to go because the police are all over the place searching for him and his buddy. He adds an almost indiscernible stutter to his voice in moments of stress. Nothing is made of it. It's just a nice touch that makes him human. He has a couple of shirtless scenes during which his wounds are treated by Wallace and I hated him for that. How can he be so muscular and sound at the age of forty-three? The swine.Jean Wallace is not much of an actress but she looks as if she would be perfectly at home milking cows on a Polish włość. I hope you appreciate that Polish word. It means "small farm." Took me half an hour to find the proper alphabet. Dan Duryea -- well, we missed his slick-backed hair and straw boater and his whining voice and his slapping dames around. Here, he's a fagged out lunger wrapped up in sweaters and scarves and looking as if the North Korean Army had just marched over him. Steven Hill is unrecognizable except as the stereotype he is. And as for the kid, kids will be kids. Everybody loves them, except Hill.Overall it's pretty depressing. It's claustrophobic. It resembles a staged play in which the set dresser was drunk all the time. And the story, for all its shouting, is a little weak in humanity. (See "Hud" for a successful example of how to make a movie about a couple of people on a ranch.) Poor Dan Duryea freezes in the snow. It's not quite certain exactly where his body is found, through either careless direction or editing. But if I were despondent and depressed, a total failure -- and I AM -- I think I'd hang myself if I had to live in a seedy dump like that.

Storm Fear is a contrast of brothers, both of whom have failed in life. Cornel Wilde plays the `bad' brother, fleeing from a bank robbery. Dan Duryea is the `good' brother who can't come to grips with his own artistic and personal failures. I do not like Cornel Wilde, yet I found he created a sympathetic, very human `good-for-nothing', a surprisingly less intelligent role for a lead actor to play. Duryea, on the other hand, is much less sympathetic, perhaps because he is reaching for stars that are obviously out of his grasp. Jean Wallace is quite good as Duryea's wife and Wilde's former lover. She effectively straddles the worlds of both men. Steven Hill portrays the unstable member of Wilde's gang, but he doesn't seem quite sure how far to take his character at times.This should have been more claustrophobic with 6 people cooped up in a house in a snow storm, but the script handles this nicely. The film gives the appearance of being an inexpensive production; yet, it makes the most of what is there in set, actors, etc. Wilde does a credible job of directing. Elmer Bernstein's score is a plus. The ending, however, is totally unsatisfactory, obviously bowing to conventions of the mid 50s when uncompromising films were not the norm.