Roseanna McCoy (Joan Evans) has come of age to attract boys, and her over-protective family is determined to make sure she stays virtuous. Papa Raymond Massey and mama Aline MacMahon are God-fearing country folk whose feud with the no-good Hatfields goes back generations. When Roseanna meets Johnse Hatfield (Farley Granger), the son of Pa McCoy's worst enemy (Charles Bickford), he bewitches her like Heathcliff did Cathy in "Wuthering Heights". Sucking out the poison in Roseanna from the sting of a hornet, Johnse finds he can't release her from his soul, and no matter how she fights, he is now in her soul as well. Johnse takes her to meet his parents, and while Bickford isn't at all in favor of a Hatfield/McCoy romance, ma Hope Emerson (the year before she got hisses as the nasty matron in "Caged") is little more receptive, even though she tries to hide it. Johnse is determined to prove to the McCoys that he doesn't have the killer instinct they assume all the Hatfields have, but once one of the nastier Hatfields (played by Richard Basehart) shoots Roseanna's younger brother (Marshall Thompson), the war is back on.
This is an attractive film to look at, extremely well acted by a bunch of pros, yet there is little explanation to convince me why these two families hate everybody in the other family with such vengeance. The ending, too (SPOILER ALERT), had me cold, as a sense of good will comes out of nowhere. I don't think in real life, such peace would erupt so quickly out of violence, although there may be some cheering for the way one of the film's villains is dealt with. I longed for a reunion between the matriarch and patriarch of each of the clans, to give further detail to why these families are so reluctant to declare a truce, but they never appear together, except in different shots of the fathers during the final battle.
This is an attractive film to look at, extremely well acted by a bunch of pros, yet there is little explanation to convince me why these two families hate everybody in the other family with such vengeance. The ending, too (SPOILER ALERT), had me cold, as a sense of good will comes out of nowhere. I don't think in real life, such peace would erupt so quickly out of violence, although there may be some cheering for the way one of the film's villains is dealt with. I longed for a reunion between the matriarch and patriarch of each of the clans, to give further detail to why these families are so reluctant to declare a truce, but they never appear together, except in different shots of the fathers during the final battle.