Hudson’s second outing with director Raoul Walsh in ‘GUN FURY’ of 1953, made him the participant in a film masterpiece where the social and psychological issue of a dominant male with a  colonial viewpoint comes face to face with an individualistic pacifist male position. In this film, revived historical conflicts and egotistical male satisfaction are opposed by the positive indifference of Hudson, bent on building an independent man and wife family unit away from the frontier wilderness. The truth is that Hudson’s role as the post-Civil War pacifist husband-to-be of Donna Reed, travelling in the Western wilderness to meet him, is not as central to the film as the supporting roles of Donna Reed as his kidnapped fiancé, Phil Carey as the macho ex Civil War colonial outlaw who steals her for himself, Leo Gordon as Carey’s ‘heavy’ sidekick who disagrees with Carey’s obsession with Reed and turns against him, joining Hudson, and a lone silent vengeful Native Indian, the real avenger in the film, whose sister Carey also once kidnapped in his despotic personal rampage.
‘Gun Fury’s’ uniqueness
‘Gun Fury’ has no real central star, and Hudson’s upholding of man’s best values occurs as a screen against which Walsh projects Reed’s, Carey’s, Gordon’s, and the Indian’s characteristics as criss-crossed values equally worthy of our attention. It is this approach in adult content and style which makes ‘Gun Fury’ a unique and exciting Western, as well as a colorful and deeply significant cinematic work of art.
Homosexuality in Westerns
‘Gun Fury’ is also one of those intriguing Westerns where homosexual relations, or non-macho differences between male characters, are suggested with subtle and startling demonstrative screen structures, dialogue, and action. Walsh brought this to new sophisticated heights in ‘Gun Fury’. Making it one of the first Westerns to explore the topic in semiotic visual and linguistic scenes.
Certain Hollywood directors created cinematic history by revealing the inherent ability of Westerns to explore problems and conflicts of male egotism, loyalty, and jealousies born of evolving civilized ambitions, opinions, and choices within the colorful, primeval geographic non-European American Western frontier. Some of the outstanding Westerns where both obvious and latent homosexual relations are suggested between male characters caught up in such problems and conflicts are: ‘GUNMAN’S WALK’ of 1958, directed by Phil Karlson, where James Darren’s role, quite similar to Hudson’s in ‘Gun Fury’, is pacifist and gentlemanly in contrast to his brother Tab Hunter’s jealous, violent, and racist anti- female rages.
‘THE LAW AND JAKE WADE’ of 1958, directed by John Sturges, where Richard Widmark’s and Robert Taylor’s past friendship becomes dangerous due to Taylor’s reformed behavior and love for a woman; the same conflict defines an even greater Western, ‘WARLOCK’ of 1959, directed by Edward Dmytryk, where Henry Fonda breaks away from Anthony Quinn’s possessive personal influence in a town they came to tame. However, probably the most volatile and psychologically frightening latent homosexual relation in a Western exists between Anthony Quinn and Robert Taylor in ‘RIDE VAQUERO’, directed by John Farrow in the same year as Walsh’s ‘Gun Fury’, 1953.
Hudson’s values in ‘Gun Fury’.
Hudson’s steadfast upholding of his pacifist principles in ‘Gun Fury’, (he never fires a shot, never kills) represents a different concept of masculine values which simplistic masculinity often defines as ‘soft’ or ‘weak’. Phil Carey is the opposite of this, as he tells Hudson in the film. Carey represents the male values of old Southern plantation society, like a slave master who never wants to give up authoritarian views and power wielded over white or other women. This is brought out by his love for the Mexican border town where he finds acceptance and privilege among the servile local women, delivering kidnapped Donna Reed to join them. Leo Gordon, in one of his best roles ever, (remember him as the ‘heavy’ in ‘RED SUNDOWN’ with Rory Calhoun?) was once Carey’s close male buddy, until Carey developed an obsession with Donna Reed, Hudson’s fiancé, which causes a jealous Gordon to desert Carey to help Hudson pursue him. Director Walsh delivers a brilliant succession of images which suggest homosexual sentiments, and the deflation of male pride via the acceptance of woman after she has lost her innocence and was violated.
In one brilliant symbolic scene Gordon gathers up a bundle of faggots and dumps it on a camp fire as Hudson backs him. In another scene, Reed returns to Hudson after being sexually violated by Carey, yet this does not seem to harm her, because so far in the film she had not been able to comfortably re-unite and fulfill any sexual desires with Hudson. In fact Walsh’s use of Donna Reed, one of the best sensual actresses Westerns ever had, reveals his interest in subverting the traditional modest role of white women in Westerns; despite all her long skirts, Reed oozes vulgar sexuality by the way she sits astride her horse and rides furiously along with the men in ‘Gun Fury’; and most amazing of all, when placed among the Mexican women, and after a bath, she puts on a flowing dress while Walsh’s camera clearly proves her complete nakedness underneath. This is unprecedented for a Western in 1953!
Lastly, the ‘Gun Fury’ of the film’s title is really figurative, and has little or nothing to do with the fury of real guns, but with Phil Carey’s lustful penis, which releases the film’s exciting mobile adventures, and the metaphorical visual pleasures of its overall style.