Struggling writer Dan Duryea lives in a remote mountain house with wife Jean Wallace and son David Stollery. Then Duryea's brother and bank robber Cornel Wilde arrives with his accomplices Steven Hill and Lee Grant. Wilde's been shot in the leg during a robbery but after Wallace removes the bullet the robbers can't move on, because of a fierce snow storm. Stollery's never seen his uncle and is fascinated by Wilde, who's the complete opposite of the sickly and weak Duryea. But Wallace and Wilde used to be lovers, with their past becoming an additional source of friction and tension in the cramped house.A claustrophobic home-invasion thriller meets love-triangle melodrama, actor/director/producer Cornel Wilde ('The Big Combo') does a good job of keeping this movie, which is rather talky, tense and gripping. And he also gets good performances from most of the actors, including himself. Especially Wilde's real life wife Wallace ('The Big Combo') gives a great performance, as a woman struggling with several dilemmas that come to a head when Wilde forces himself back into her life. I also really enjoyed Grant's ('Detective Story') performance, who was blacklisted at the time. She reminded me of the streetwise and tough but sympathetic gunmolls from the 30s gangster movies, particularly Gladys George in 'The Roaring Twenties'. I kinda wanted to see more of her part in this movie. And while kid actors are 9 out of 10 times either wooden or annoying, Stollery is pretty convincing and even subtle. He gave up acting however and became a successful car designer. Noir icon Duryea ('Scarlet Street') plays against type and he does well as always but he doesn't have a lot to do besides cough and moan, which is a shame. Hill (TV's 'Law & Order') is the only dissonant, he's uneven and seems unsure how to play his part.Wilde keeps the movie focused and never lets the narrative wander off too far. Once the dramatic moments inside the house have been exhausted, he moves the story outdoors, with Stollery guiding Wilde and his crew across a mountain, pursued by Dennis Weaver (TV's 'McCloud'). Oddly enough tho, while Weaver has no problem following their tracks, he doesn't seem to notice one of crew members who's been left behind halfway with a broken ankle. What also helps is that DoP Joseph La Shelle ('Laura') does a great job with both the indoor and outdoor scenes, his lensing is both effective and nice to look at, but also not too prominent to take over the movie. Having said all that tho, I am not sure this movie has a lot of rewatch value. The story is not very surprising and moves to a predictable climax (altho the final moments are rather touching, thanks to some pretty good acting), and I feel that by focusing primarily on himself and Wallace's past, Wilde left out some opportunities to really crank up the heat. Still, I can recommend it.

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.

A struggling writer and his family are visited at their remote mountain farm by his brother -- a wounded bank robber on the lam. Cornel Wilde directed eight films in his lifetime (seven of them, like this one, starring himself) and this was his first. And a superior first film it is, one I liked much more than NAKED PREY. Elevated far above the usual hostage drama by the strained familial relations and internal strife within each group. The interactions between the players are leaden with sorrow, failure and the ghosts of past regrets. Every character occupies a gray area, conflicted and/or damaged. Even the young boy plays a crucial role beyond being just an adorable moppet in jeopardy. The exception is the sidekick character who is pretty much your standard bad guy, but even he is given life with an engaging performance by Steven Hill. The whole cast is great: Lee Grant as the shabby dame, Jean Wallace as the wife with some secrets of her own, Dan Duryea again impressing me with a role outside his usual mold, Dennis Weaver as the hired hand, and of course Wilde. He makes an interesting choice to play the character with a slight stammer, hinting at the doubts that gnaw at him. The script is thoughtful and gripping, with a few great hard-boiled zingers for Grant and Hill. I also have to mention the music, yet another sublime score by Elmer Bernstein. This is an outstanding picture that takes unexpected turns and is heavy with melancholy and desperation. It needs a restoration and DVD release immediately.

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.