Terror in a Texas Town (1958)

Director:

Joseph H. Lewis

Writers (WGA):

Dalton Trumbo (written by) (front Ben Perry)
Ben Perry (front for Dalton Trumbo)

Release Date:

September 1958 (USA)

Genre:

Western

Tagline:

When the Texas Plains Ran With Blood and Black Gold!

Plot:

A Swedish whaler is out for revenge when he finds out that a greedy oil man murdered his father for their land. |

Plot Keywords:

Oil | Revenge | Whaler | Moral Courage | Evil Landowner

Cast

Sterling Hayden	...	George Hansen
Sebastian Cabot	...	Ed McNeil
Carol Kelly	...	Molly
Eugene Martin	...	Pepe Mirada
Nedrick Young	...	Johnny Crale (as Ned Young)
Victor Millan	...	Jose Mirada
Frank Ferguson	...	Deacon Matt Holmes
Marilee Earle	...	Mona Stacey

Runtime:

80 min | USA:81 min (DVD version)

Country:

USA

Language:

English | Spanish

Color:

Black and White

Aspect Ratio:

1.85 : 1

Sound Mix:

Mono (Westrex Recording System)

Certification:

USA:Approved (MPAA rating: certificate #18924) | UK:PG | West Germany:12 (nf) | Finland:K-16 | Sweden:15 | Canada:G (Quebec) | Canada:PG (Ontario)

Filming Locations:

California, USA

Company:

Seltzer Films

Trivia:

This was the final feature film for director Joseph H. Lewis. He would spend much of the next decade directing television episodes before retiring from the industry.

Movie Connections:

Referenced in Cinemania (2002)

Low-budget film raises disturbing questions

There's a lot more to this little Western than the cheap thrills the title might suggest. The film itself may have been made in black and white, but the off-beat story is shot through with shades of moral grey. Indeed, I'm not sure that it would be entirely baseless to describe it as an implicit indictment of US society.

This picture uses familiar Western stereotypes - the corrupt sheriff, the land-greedy tycoon, the sinister hired gun - in a depiction that subtly undercuts much of the entire genre. I don't think it's too far-fetched to see the long shadow of McCarthy over the townspeople who allow themselves to be cowed and driven off one at a time, only to turn at last as a mob not on the man who bribed their silence, but on the outsider employed as a tool to do his dirty work.

(Having just read the IMDB entry for this film and discovered that the scriptwriter was himself blacklisted by the McCarthy regime, I'm now almost certain I was not imagining this!)

The whole story is framed by that final confrontation and the flashbacks (?flash-forwards?) that follow under the opening titles. After all, it's not every Western that features a man walking the length of Main Street to face down his father's killer... with a harpoon. This one *opens* with that image!

But as we catch up with the flash-back scenes in real-time we soon realise that things are not as they seem. This is no standard Western, there are no stand-up gunfights and no galloping horses; the only quick-draw we see is performed under duress as a humiliating party-trick. Virtue is not rewarded and those who make a stand on principle only suffer thereby. The hired killer is an aging gunman whose trade has lost him the use of his good right hand; the dogged hero is no cowboy or plains drifter but a seaman from a Swedish whaler, and the script makes it very clear just what value he can place on American justice.

Inexorably, driven by the sinister jaunty little tune of the theme music, the story winds on until we reach again that final face-down - and now the close-ups make sense, and they are not what we thought they were. That man with the moustache is not the sheriff; that blonde is not the hero's girl; the crowd is not spilling out of a saloon.

And it is not any longer, for me at least, the clear-cut question of good and evil the genre has led us to expect. When it is all over - when the shots are called and the dice are down - the crowd pours past the Swede without a backward glance. Society doesn't want to know; doesn't want to face its own complicity. It wants a scapegoat to sacrifice, and for life to go on.

Morally, this film is very far from black and white. If it is a B-movie, then it is by far more unsettling than the vast majority of cheap and cheerful productions made in that budget. I cannot imagine what its intended audience must have made of it. Am I the only viewer to find myself drawn as much to the cold-blooded, isolated 'villain' as to the nominal hero?