'Briefly, the story concerns the high, wide and handsome adventures of Captain Fury, a political prisoner from Ireland, who arrives in Australia to discover the perfidious and greedy practices of land barons who are trying to oust the settlers and colonists so that they can establish vast feudal estates and rule them like mediaeval tyrants. Fury is set to work shearing sheep, on the compound of Arnold Trist, a cold-blooded villain who has been terrorising the entire settlement, a few hundred miles outside Sydney. How Fury outwits this man and brings civilised law and order to the community provides a thrilling climax to the story, which is filled with many hair-raising, blood-and-thunder episodes.'
Source:
'Captain Fury', Goulburn Evening Penny Post, 30 August 1939, p.3.
Contemporary newspaper reports indicate that Hal Roach commissioned research in the Mitchell Library, Sydney, which resulted in a compilation of some 100 photographs, which 'provided an authentic guide for such items as soldiers' uniforms, a civic gaol, scenes in old Sydney streets, a squatter's home, settlers' huts, etc.'
Source:
'Authenticity Preferred', ~Canberra Times, 22 August 1939, p.3.
Reviews noted that the film, despite the research, partook somewhat of the western aesthetic:
It would be easy to pick holes in this film. Captain Fury's followers, for example, speak with an American accent. They wear sombreros and check shirts. They refer to homesteads as cabins and ride to the rescue of settlers who are indistinguishable from pioneers in the American wild west. Yet the film has many qualities which command admiration.
Source:
'Captain Fury', Sydney Morning Herald, 28 August 1939, p.5.
