Rainey Dawn This film is a fairly quick paced western - they get to point of revenge fast within the first few minutes of the film - there is no drawn out waiting game. The character building happens during the "revenge" so there is none of character building before the good stuff starts like you see in so many of today's films.This is a film I was introduced to via Lon Chaney Jr... watching his westerns. This one is a pretty good western with a great cast - a few big names. The story gets interesting right from the start - so it drew me in after about 10 minutes of viewing and I'm not a big fan of western movies.7/10

MARIO GAUCI Maybe I had been spoiled a fortnight ago by the 'surprising' excellence of Dwan's SILVER LODE (1954), or perhaps I had my mind on other things while it was playing (I had just installed my brand new DVD recorder), or it is simply that the film needed a more compelling villain than Rodolfo Acosta; the fact remains that I was underwhelmed by this first viewing of PASSION. Not that it really has a reputation to uphold or anything but, retaining the services of much of the same crew as SILVER LODE (director Dwan, producer Benedict Bogeaus, cinematographer John Alton, composer Louis Forbes, art director Van Nest Polglase, bit-part actors Stuart Whitman and Robert Warwick, etc.), one can't help but expect similarly satisfying results. At least, the cast is quite good: Cornel Wilde, Yvonne De Carlo (in a dual role as Wilde's ladylike wife and her tomboyish twin sister!), Raymond Burr (as the Sheriff), Lon Chaney Jr. (as a drunken brute with a really loud cackle), John Qualen (as De Carlo's grandfather) and Anthony Caruso (as Burr's suspicious colleague). The film, set in Old California, follows a typical revenge story pattern which, unfortunately, seems not to have inspired Dwan much until the snowbound (or rather studio-bound) finale: in fact, Wilde does most of the killings – barring that of Chaney and Acosta – offscreen! Ultimately, PASSION emerges as a modestly pleasing and colorful diversion that falls short of achieving its potential…especially when judging the end result against similar contemporary Western fare about obsessive odysseys of revenge like Fritz Lang's RANCHO NOTORIOUS (1952) and Henry King's THE BRAVADOS (1958).

copper1963 Two Yvonnes (De Carlo) are better than one. Always. That's my opinion and I'm sticking to it. R.K.O. strikes gold in this dark western set somewhere in Northern California, sometime before the land was tamed by the U.S. government. The trio of Miss De Carlo (the fiery one), Cornel Wilde and Raymond Burr spend a good chunk of the running time of this movie chasing after the five desperadoes who have slaughtered one of the Yvonnes (the demure one) and her grandparents. Her son survives. Barely. In discovering the massacre at the farmhouse, Wilde's character catches a bad case of revenge and sets his sights on the perpetrators of those bad deeds. The police--Burr and Anthony Caruso--are ineffective. They always seem to show up a couple of heartbeats too late. The film does nothing to dissuade someone from uttering: "you can never find a cop when you need one." The scenery is fabulous. When Wilde marches off the lush greenery of the mountain's downslope and ascends the glacier in pursuit of the last bad guy, we know he has crossed the line into madness, He is out of control. Lawless. The ending is wrapped up in a satisfying manner. But the title (Passion) bothers me. I'm changing it to Obsession. And I'm sticking to it.

Michael Although this centres around the nondescript rendering of a standby genre plot - rancher seeks vengeance on those responsible for the massacre of his family - this at least turns out to have the succinct punch of economic efficiency that was the hallmark of many an RKO western. There's nothing much to speak of in terms of both script and acting - everyone is far too solemn, and disappointingly this does not exclude the quality thespian triumvirate of De Carlo, Burr and Chaney Jr.The real star is the colour photography (a panchromatic change of pace from a veteran cinematographer of many b/w 40s noirs) and the scenery within it; mise-en-scene courtesy of Fred-n-Ginger art deco specialist Van Nest Polglase. Both are sufficient to sustain one's interest through to the 'revenge is just as immoral as murder' conclusion.It's exactly the sort of film that transcends Dwan's more usual 'Cattle Queen Of Montana' type dross to attract the attention of those predisposed to critical revisionism of the B-western after a sufficient passage of time, which is why I'm all the more surprised at the lack of previous user comments.