Terror in a Texas Town (1958)

Tied for the best movie I have ever seen

Excellent, a Must See

I cannot think of one single thing that I would change about this film. The acting is incomparable, the directing deft, and the writing poignantly brilliant.

if their story seems completely bonkers, almost like a feverish work of fiction, you ain't heard nothing yet.

Easily one of the worst westerns I have ever been forced to watch. It starts out with clips from different parts of the movie, including most of the ending, and then settles down to tell the story (such as it is). First of all, though this is a town in Texas NOBODY carries or even seems to own a gun except for the bad guy. Then, this one man terrifies everyone except a Swedish ex-whaler who is basically a pacifist. Not only is the script lame but the acting is poor and unbelievable. Most of the actors seem to be just going through the motions. This is a grade D movie in my opinion. Watch it and make your own decision. I watched it because I had a friend who was an extra in the film.

Terror in a Texas Town (1958)The first five minutes of this movie is fabulous a play of archetypes, with a showdown, some cattle breaking free and stampeding, a raging fire, and some close ups of sad faces lit by the flames. In fact, in the wide screen black and white, it seems most of all like a precursor to the spaghetti Westerns, dramatic and just a hair "arch" in its excess, music, photography, acting and all. It all takes place in a little Texan town called Prairie City.This is a great movie right off the bat, but it isn't sustained. It tries too hard sometimes, and unlike "The Good, The Bad, and the Ugly" it talks too much for its own good. There is an overweight bad man (Sebastian Cabot of all people) who has a maniacal laugh, a tough guy gunslinger (Ned Young) with a fast draw and a metal arm, and there is a stoic good guy (Sterling Hayden) who depends on his stoicism and morality to stand up against them. Men are strong, women are to be kept in bed (or so the gunslinger tells his dame), and life is hard. In addition to the wood frame one street town and the hardworking farmers there is the discovery of oil, and lots of it, an appropriate twist in this final chapter of the Wild West.The director is a favorite of mine, Joseph H. Lewis ("Gun Crazy" and "The Big Combo" both precede this one), and it has some of the same crudely cut archetypes and stiff dialog. But this is part of the style (he surely knew what he was doing), and adds to the blunt force of the story. There are moments of raw and brutal violence and sections of peaceful bucolic life. People are oddly realistic even if the movie isn't. This is a kind of warm up to about fifty episodes of a classic television show called "The Rifleman" that Lewis directed, playing with simple stories well told but quickly arranged. Sam Peckinpah initiated that show, and we can see some back and forth influence between the two directors.It is a bit odd to hear Sterling Hayden with a Swedish accent. He plays a kind of simple fellow, but good hearted, and neither quality is exactly useful in this rough town. Hayden ends up a caricature, and not a good one. He is filled with such strained affectations, and he plays a "good" person, but he doesn't sweep you into his cause because he's just plain weird. But of course he prevails, and the last five minutes is much like the first, and you see that justice is sometimes the hardest thing to achieve but you have to keep trying anyway. It's a strain, but an archetypal one.

"Big Combo" director Joseph H. Lewis' offbeat western "Terror in a Texas Town" is a low-budget endeavor that tweaks the formula and offers a little something different. The typical protagonist who performs the heroic duties is not a stud in a 10-gallon hat with a six-gun. Sterling Hayden, who played a gun-toting lawman in "Top Gun," plays George Hansen, a Swede with a slight accent who has made a living wielding a harpoon as a whaler on a sailing ship. He has arrived to take care of his late father's property. Lewis opens the film with part of the climactic showdown that occurs later at the end when our hero totes his father's harpoon to a gun duel. Lewis doesn't let the action loiter and "Terror in a Texas Town" clocks in at 81 minutes. One flaw is the death of the villain at the hands of another villain, an act of violence which occurs off-camera and deprives us of any closure in seeing how the villain accepted death. This western imitates all those that came before it with regard to the town boss plot.Basically, this Dalton Trumbo-scripted black & white frontier epic qualifies as your standard town boss western with an elegant city-slicker (Sebastian Cabot) as the villain. He never abandons the comfort of his hotel room in town. He controls the town and has the sheriff in his pocket. The second-in-command villain is a black-clad hombre, Johnny Crale (Nedrick Young of "Gun Crazy"), strapping a matched brace of six-guns. Since can no longer shoot with his right hand, he handles his gun with his left hand. Symbolically, this tough-talking Hemingway type character is castrated because his hand doesn't work. Moreover, to enhance his evil, he wears a solid black outfit from Stetson to boots. He has a moment toward the end where he learns that some men aren't afraid to die and it rattles him. The town citizens that cower at the feet of the town boss are embroiled in a land dispute with him, and this individual—MacNeil—has obtained the legal right to all the territory around town. He has hired a former comrade, injured gunslinger Johnny Crale to help him dominate the people and the land. Later, our hero learns that oil soaks his father's land. All Hansen knows is that a man shot his father in cold blood. He finds a witness, Mexican landowner Jose Mirada (Victor Millan of "Touch of Evil"), who agrees to testify in court that he saw Crale murder Hansen's father. Mirada dies not long afterward when the black-clad killer confronts him on his property. Tragically, Mirada's wife has just given birth to a baby. Previously, she had refused to let him reveal his knowledge of Hansen's murder. All this makes it imperative that Hansen kill Crale in the most unorthodox western showdown.Altogether, despite its differences with the typical western, "Terror in a Texas" qualifies as something of an oddity. The way that Lewis and Trumbo has tweaked the formula is clever, but the overall impact is less than satisfactorily in pure entertainment terms. The William Wyler western "The Big Country," made after this one, attempted the same thing by making the protagonist a sea captain who was going to marry into a cattle owning empire. "The Big Country" was flawed, too. "Terror in a Texas" suffers from contrivance and the omission of the villain's death scene in the hotel.

There was so much gunsmoke in Hollywood, 1958, the producers of this low-budget indie can hardly be blamed for the harpoon gimmick. All in all, the movie is neither the best nor the worst of oaters of that day, as some folks hold. It does have points of interest, but overall the 80 minutes lacks the intensity that many of the elements promise. For example, Ned Young's killer dresses the part, postures the part, and leers the part, but the total never gets beyond the impersonation stage. There's no real sense that he means it. Compare Young's black clad gunman with his counterpart, the fearsomely memorable Jack Palance of Shane (1953), as illustration. Then too, as another reviewer notes, Cabot's scheming mastermind fails to convey much beyond a grumpy old fat guy waiting for dinner. Thus the needed sense of evil-incarnate never really materializes, despite the posturing. In fact, in my little book, it's Carol Kelly as the conflicted Molly who delivers the movie's one really convincing performance.Now, I have as much respect for director Lewis as the next old movie buff, particularly for that overlooked Korean War drama Retreat, Hell! (1952). However, it looks like he was just going through the motions here, especially in his work with the actors. As other reviewers note, the movie does have points of interest absent from other little Westerns of the day, including that stunning back shot of Hayden stalking down railroad tracks that stretch to infinity-- a memorable visual. Nonetheless, despite the many script opportunities and dramatic situations, the action never really gels into the riveting essay on greed and evil that writer Trumbo evidently desires. In passing— the low-budget Western was a favorite refuge for those in Hollywood blacklisted by HUAC, like Trumbo and Young, or those compromised, like Hayden. My favorite is The Tall Texan (1953), not a very good movie, but featuring a whole array of compromised Hollywood talent looking for a needed payday. Watching such stalwart city types as Lee J. Cobb and Luther Adler tell their horses to giddy-up amounts to a real hoot. But unfortunately, it hasn't turned up on the movie channels lately. Then again, maybe that's fortunately.