In a film that is partially taken from The Treasure of the Sierra Madre, two down on their luck Americans, Gary Cooper and Ward Bond, run into an old pal, Anthony Quinn who has become richer in the oil business than these two wildcatters have. Quinn's also married Barbara Stanwyck who at one time had a thing for Cooper.

It's over for Coop, but Stanwyck ain't taking no for an answer. Even the presence of Ruth Roman one of those beautiful woman that are stuck in exotic places in films who's really got Coop's attention, doesn't faze her a bit. She says she'll do whatever she has to, to win Coop back and pretty much does as the film concludes.

Blowing Wild only holds interest because of the star players involved. When you consider that back in the day Cooper and Stanwyck did classics like Meet John Doe and Ball of Fire, Blowing Wild looks like something they did in their spare time on a holiday in Mexico.

Everybody overacts outrageously to keep the film afloat even Gary Cooper if you can believe that.

I have been an avid Turner Classic Movies viewer and cannot recall them ever playing this obscure Gary Cooper film. It's a shame, as it's pretty good. The film is a remake of the Cagney film "Torrid Zone" and it's also a bit similar (at least in the early part of the movie) to "Wages of Fear"...a film that also came out in 1953.

Jeff and Dutch (Gary Cooper and Ward Bond) are stuck in Mexico*...broke and with no prospects after bandits dynamite their oil rig. They get a crazy job transporting nitroglycerin but it turns out that the guy hiring them is a crook. Fortunately, at least at first, an old friend, Paco (Anthony Quinn),discovers their plight and hires them. Unfortunately, his wife, Marina (Barbara Stanwyck),is a total screwball...a femme fatale in the most vivid sense. She doesn't appreciate that Paco is handsome, loves her and provides her with anything she wants...she wants Jeff...mostly because it's wrong! What's to come of all this?

This is a decent film that gets better later due to Stanwyck's florid character. She's bad...really, really bad...and although she was not the lead, she easily dominated the film. The only negative is that you KNOW what's going to happen to her due to the notion enforced at the time that the evil must ultimately pay. Exciting and well worth seeing.

She is Barbara Stanwyck, the hot-blooded and high maintenance wife of oil rig baron Anthony Quinn, as well as former lover of Gary Cooper, and she is desperate to get rid of a husband she hates and get back a former lover who makes her oil crude. Stanwyck's characters has never been someone you'd see grocery shopping (unless she was plotting a murder with Fred MacMurray) or attending social functions, but here, she is aging but still very much on the prowl. She's definitely a cougar, and while her prey may not be a young buck, she's roaring loudly with desire. Cooper, though, isn't buying her brand of spitfire anymore, and is now ready to settle for the sultriness of Ava Gardner look-alike Ruth Roman who purrs her lines like a kitten compared to Stanwyck's raspy and claw-clad alley cat. Quinn, too, underestimates his wife's hatred, finding out the hard way her real desires.

This is the third variation of this story at Warner Brothers-1935's "Bordertown" and 1940's "They Drive By Night", all told extremely similar stories with different professions for the hero and equally wild leading ladies in the Stanwyck role: Bette Davis ("Bordertown") and Ida Lupino ("They Drive By Night") both got to be dames to be reckoned with. Roman takes on the Margaret Lindsay and Ann Sheridan roles with Cooper replacing Paul Muni and George Raft, Quinn taking over for Eugene Palette and Alan Hale.

An unusually large over abundance of music dominates this version, including a theme song ("Marina Mine") sung by Frankie Laine, obviously influenced by his hit recording of "Do Not Forsake Me", the theme from Cooper's Oscar Winning success "High Noon" the previous year. Quinn's seemingly macho coward fights cowardice as a result of harassment from Mexican bandits, seen at the start of the film attempting to rob Cooper with stereotypical racist dialog. Ward Bond gives a sympathetic performance as Cooper's mentor. While the romance may focus on Cooper and Roman, it is Stanwyck who dominates the film. She may be melodramatic, but she's somebody you'll never forget.