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

Also Known As:

Sturm über Texas (Austria) (West Germany) [de]
Il terrore del Texas (Italy) [it]
Terreur au Texas (France) [fr]
Terror i Texas (Sweden) [sv]
Terroria Texasissa (Finland) [fi]

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)

A great, cluelessly forgotten, 50s Western from a B-Movie genius.

When people discuss the Western in the 50s, the richest decade of the genre, they invariably cite Anthony Mann, Budd Boetticher, THE SEARCHERS or RIO BRAVO . Only the specialised, however, will single out Joseph H. Lewis. A LAWLESS STREET electrifies a banal story with inventive technique. TERROR, though, is something else. I have watched hundreds of Westerns, and I can safely say that this is the most remarkable pre-Peckinpah/Leone effort I've seen. It may not be as rich as the above-mentioned, but its formal daring is unparalleled.

Like Mann, Lewis came to the Manichean world of the Western from film noir, a genre defined by its moral ambiguity. The opening sequence is the most astonishing of any Western (except THE WILD BUNCH, of course), and cleverly complicates everything that follows. It starts with the shoot-out, an innovative device, but one of the combatants carries a large pike. His opponent, face unseen, taunts him. The scene is highly charged, even if we don't know why.

The result of this sequence is cut, and we get the opening credits, featuring an elliptical series of scenes, some lyrically pastoral, others brutally violent, none making any narrative sense because we don't know the story yet. The film proper hurtles us into a violent arson attack. So in the first five minutes, the viewer is assaulted by sensation and violence. There are none of the reassuring signifiers of the traditional Western - noble music (the score here is as bizarre, inventive and parodic as any Morricone spaghetti); John Wayne or Henry Fonda above the title; contextually explanatory intertitles. We have no idea what is going on, we are left staggered, breathless, excited, reeling.

What follows is an explanation of these events. But the unforgettable effect lingers, and colours what seems to be a traditional Western story - big business trying to muscle in on small farmers. The most interesting figure is not the hero, Sterling Hayden, a gentle man forced by circumstance to find savage violence in himself (and saddled with a ridiculous, faltering Swedish accent, but little character), but the villain. In many ways he is the archetypal baddie - dressed in black, a gun for hire, snarling, brutal with women. But he is also a complex psychological portrait - a once great shot, now a cripple, lush and impotent. The familiar story is subverted to become the tragedy of an evil man. The film's surface detective element - who killed Hayden's father - is subsumed thematically by the investigation into this fascinating character (we know early on who killed him anyway).

Stylistically, Lewis turns the Western, traditionally about open spaces, new frontiers, hope, escape, into a bitter male melodrama about entrapment, failure and death. The stark, clear visuals are as beautiful and aesthetically exciting as THE OX-BOW INCIDENT, another morbid masterpiece. The disturbing editing, and exagerrated compositions seem to belong more to Nouvelle Vague deconstructions than a Hollywood Western. Almost as awesome as GUN CRAZY, this is provocative proof that Lewis was a great director.