Terror in a Texas Town

Starring:Sterling Hayden, Sebastian Cabot, Carol Kelly (II), Eugene Martin, Nedrick Young, Victor Millan, Frank Ferguson, Marilee Earle, Fred Kohler Jr., Hank Patterson, Gil Lamb, Ann Varela, Jeffrey Sayre, Ted Stanhope, Byron Foulger, Glenn Strange, Sheb Wooley, Steve Mitchell, Tyler McVey, James Russell
Director: Joseph H. Lewis
Studio: MGM (Video & DVD)
Product Type: DVD

Average customer rating:

One Star
They all came here to see blood
Camp? Yaaa, you betche'.
Maritime Justice Texas Style
Draw! Er, throw! Er, whatever...

Terror in a Texas Town
Starring: Sterling Hayden , Sebastian Cabot , Carol Kelly (II) , Eugene Martin , and Nedrick Young
Director: Joseph H. Lewis
Manufacturer: MGM (Video & DVD)
ProductGroup: DVD
Binding: DVD

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ASIN: B00008PX7G
Release Date: 2003-05-20

Description

Sterling Hayden (Dr. Strangelove) turns in "a brilliant performance" (The Hollywood Reporter) as a peace-loving Swedish seaman who's forced to take on an entire frontier town in this compelling and startlingly imaginative western. When George Hansen (Hayden) arrives in Prairie City, Texas, to help manage his family's fledgling farm, he finds that his father has been mysteriously murdered and no one in townnot even the sheriffplans to do anything about it! Determinedto track down the killer himself, Hansen learns that a ruthless oil prospector and his vicious group of hired guns have been forcing immigrant farmers to sell their mineral-rich landor pay for it with their lives. Despite crooked lawmen, brutal ambushes and terrorized townsfolk, Hansen tracks down his father's killer and faces off against the enemy in a remarkable showdown, reminiscent of High Noon, that's one of the most original and dramatic action sequences ever filmed.

Customer Reviews:

One Star.......2006-09-03

My friend Judy gets to review this movie for me because I suggested she watch it and this is a condition of forgiveness:

Since I have to give this one star, let the star be a collapsing black dwarf.

Sterling Hayden gives the worst performance in any actor's life. He might as well be a talking roast beef. My friend said "lutefisk?" but his Swedish accent does not bear up under the comparison.

It isn't just the movie that's bad--the score (guitar, trumpet, ?, etc.?) was obviously written by an escapee from the Insane Musicians' Mexican Rest Home.

Nuff said.

P.S. I have a friend who says "blame it on the director." OK. Blame it on the director.

They all came here to see blood.......2005-06-04

Dressed in a squared-off bowler, a wool jacket that doesn't cover his wrists, a stubby tie and sporting a painfully off-key Swedish accent, Sterling Hayden is an unlikely western hero. That ten-foot steel tipped harpoon he carries around doesn't help to buff the image much, either. Then again TERROR IN A TEXAS TOWN is an unlikely western. Scripted by blacklisted Hollywood writer Dalton Trumbo (Ben Perry received credit), it's ostensibly about a land robber (Sebastian Cabot as Ed McNeil) using means fair and foul (Ned Young as hired-gun Johnny Crale) to buy out the homesteaders in the small community of Prairie City, Texas. It's also about standing united against injustice, and not letting fear conquer integrity.
Hayden's George Hansen comes to the Prairie City after twenty years at sea to reunite with his father and help him on the farm the elder Hansen built in his absence. It was a farm coveted by McNeil as well, and hired goon Crale saw to the "Or else" part when McNeil's offer to buy it from the elder Hansen was rebuffed. The cowed community is too intimidated by McNeil to stand up to him, strength in unity or not. It's up to the foreign outsider to discover who murdered his father - the McNeil owned sheriff isn't going to tell, and the otherwise good folks don't want to get involved.
I'm not usually a great fan of the message westerns of the fifties. However noble it was to fight McCarthyism, it doesn't usually make for an interesting story - too many cowardly and townspeople for my tastes, too self-righteous a tone. Half the time I find myself rooting for the bad guy. TERROR IN A TEXAS TOWN is all that, to be sure, but the acting is generally strong, the musical score is interesting, and the pace doesn't relax too much. If the movie has to preach at me, at least this one offers an interestingly illustrated sermon.
If Hayden is a little stony and robotic in the lead, Cabot is wonderfully malicious as the velvet gloved big money bad guy and the relatively unknown Ned Young (looks a little like Humphrey Bogart) is beautifully understated as the steel-fisted thug. The movie also contains one of the oddest curtain closing shootout in western movie history. Strong recommendation for this little gem.

Camp? Yaaa, you betche'........2003-06-01

These are the kind of movies you discover in your quest to own every western ever made. Man oh man, where to begin?

Ok, hang on...I have to stop giggling first. I dont think I've ever seen the Shrimp and Lobster Platter being served up in a saloon before but I suppose that's supposed to be a metaphor for something. Sebastian Cabot makes for a decent fancyman villain but it's hard to look classy when you're scarfing down the seafood feast. And he's got a black threaded gunman that is doing a pretty good Dr.No imitation complete with a steel right hand and long black leather toxic chemical disposal gloves. Somebody discovered oil, you see, so Sebastian has got Dr.No running around killing everybody and stealing their land. Makes sense right? Probably weren't enough U-Haul trailers to go around back then so most people just opted for a bullet.

The master plan was cranking right along until Dr.No went to visit this old Swedish guy that confronted Dr.No with a harpoon. You can see where this is headed. I guess this must have reminded Dr.No how he lost his hand to a big mouth bass or something cause he got real mad and pumped about 14 rounds into the old fella while he was laying face down in the dirt. We never learned how proficient he may have been in his younger days looking for Moby Dicks and stuff. Enter funeral durge.

Sterling Heyden finally gets to town wearing a suit that is about 2 sizes too small so he has to keep pulling his vest down over his belt. Another metaphor....Hmmmnn? The accent is hilarious and would be like Bela Lugosi playing an Apache or something. Anyway, he wants some details but the sheriff tells him it's all a mystery and he can't go to his father's ranch onacounta all that yellow tape and the Patriot Act and all. This makes Sterling pretty angry, especially when he calls room service and finds out the saloon is out of shrimp so Fred Ziffel brings him the harpoon and he goes looking for Dr. No who he figures him out of a decent meal.

Only Gregory Peck's "Shoot Out" can compare for pure silliness. 2 stars for the movie, 5 for the unintentional humor.

Maritime Justice Texas Style.......2001-09-26

If this is not a cult film I donýt know what one is. The opening scene of Sterling Hayden walking down the main street of a Western town with harpoon in-hand to meet a gunman clad in black is just so offbeat one finds it difficult not to be enthralled and immediately immersed into the story. Hayden seems to have been breed for these types of films but with his pseudo-Swedish accent it just makes it all the more bizarre. Even more bizarre is Nedrick Youngýs portrayal of Johnny Crale the gunman in black. Now working for Ed McNeil (Sebastian Cabot) we learn that Crale had his right hand blown off and had it replaced with a steel one. Crale must now use his left hand to do his shooting which has diminished his skills. Basically Ed McNeil has hired gunman Crale to buy out or kill all the local landowners in town. What is really offbeat his how gunman Crale confronts each landowner and explains to each one his own perverse code of conduct and how he must carry out his duties as a gunman. Victor Millan as farmer Jose Mirada will not beg for his life and he explains it is his duty to die in dignity at the hand of Crale. Eventually Hayden the Swedish seaman must face Crale in probably the most bizarre and offbeat shootout ever filmed. I had not seen this film in over forty years until recently but I never forgot the incredible finale. Under Joseph H. Lewisý direction it is style and offbeat characterizations that sets this film apart from its rather ordinary plot. Even the score by composer Gerald Fried is rather contradictory and strangely upbeat in some scenes. This is definitely a low budget film but a very effective one.

Draw! Er, throw! Er, whatever..........2001-09-21

Joseph Lewis (My Name is Julia Ross, Gun Crazy) fans will likely be rather disappointed; this is not his finest hour-and-a-half. His films often trod on hoary ground; Big Combo could've been just another cops-and-robbers tale. But it is inventive direction, kinetic atmosphere and chiaroscuro camerawork which distinguish his work, and those elements are largely not to be found here.

Sterling Hayden (The Killing, Johnny Guitar) gives another of his ruggedly natural performances, this time as a whaler who comes to his father's Texas home, only to find Sebastian Cabot (Twice-Told Tales, The Time Machine) ruling the town with an iron fist. He wants everyone's oil-rich land, you see. Sound familiar? Of course it does. 'T in a TT' is unflinchingly violent, even a little bit subversive (Dalton Trumbo scripted it) in a Peckinpah way, and jumpily structured after the fashion of pulpy noir. But none of these things make it any more than what it is: just a fairly standard oater with an unusual conclusion.

The conclusion is really the only reason this film is remembered: it features a dusty-street showdown between hired gun and harpoon. Even so, we saw everything but the outcome of said duel in the first portions of the film. This one aspect is so askew from the norm that it might distract you from the implausibility. Or from the fact that everything else has been pretty much connecting the dots.

Or like me, it might not.

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