Howard Tyler (Frank Lovejoy) is a family man living in California who can't seem to get by financially. He meets up with a small-time but charismatic hood Jerry Slocum (Lloyd Bridges). Soon Slocum convinces Tyler to participate in gas station robberies to get by. Later they kidnap a wealthy man in hopes of getting a huge ransom. Things go wrong when the man is murdered by Slocum then thrown in a lake. Tyler reaches his limit emotionally and he begins drinking heavily. He meets a lonely woman and confesses the crime while drunk. The woman flees and goes to the police.
When the two kidnappers are arrested a local journalist (Richard Carlson) writes a series of hate-filled articles about the two prisoners which eventually lead to a brutal lynching.
The despair of the lower middle-class: A family man ashamed of being unemployed allows himself to be convinced by a gangster to take part in a kidnapping. The police arrests them both and the anger of the small town’s population is unforgiving. THE SOUND OF FURY is a dark crime movie that builds up to an apocalyptic storm but never loses sight of social realities thus telling a lot about the daily despair of the working-class. A masterpiece it was Cy Endfield’s last film before he felt compelled to move to Britain.