Rent Terror in a Texas Town (1958)

Cult Western. - Terror in a Texas Town review by Steve

Brief, fast paced B western which is full of offbeat narrative details: like the gunfighter's steel prosthetic right hand and the hero's duelling weapon of choice, the harpoon. It's a fascinating film, packed with audacious stylistic flourishes. The ultra-stark black and white photography, allied to a percussive mariachi score, gives the film a unique ambience.

Sterling Hayden plays a Swedish immigrant sailor who comes home to Texas to discover a rich landowner (Sebastian Cabot) has hired a gunman (Ned Young) to murder the farmers who have leased his territory, now he has discovered it is sitting on a sea of oil.  The killer has shot down the sailor's father. So it's a revenge western.

This was written by the blacklisted Dalton Trumbo under a front, and the film is ostentatiously about the failure of people to stand up to an oppressor. It is also a story about the corruption of capitalism. The terrified farmers wonder why one man should want everything. Hayden was another victim of McCarthy. He is terrific in this.

And it's an exciting work of genre fiction; the film moves like a bullet. There is phenomenal suspense for such archetypal situations. And the characters are vivid and moving. We really care about these persecuted farmers. This was Joseph H. Lewis' last film before he went onto tv, but he was still clearly at his peak. He's among the great low budget directors.