[yasr_overall_rating]
A Swedish whaler is out for revenge when he finds out that a greedy oil man murdered his father for their land.
“Terror in a Texas Town” is a film that was born in infamy. The script was written by Dalton Trumbo, who is one of the most well-known screenwriters of the last 100 years, due to being blacklisted for refusing to name members of the communist party. At the time the script was written, Trumbo was deep in his blacklist period and writing under an assumed name. Trumbo was so entrenched in writing this film that people began to forget he had written it. The film was also the last picture by director Joseph H. Lewis, who had the ability to throw in the towel and work with a blacklisted director because it was his final film.
The legend goes that this script pulled Joseph Lewis out of retirement. I’m not exactly sure why, though, “Terror in a Texas Town” is about McNeil who uses gunfighter Johnny Crale to scare away local rancher. Sven Hansen stands up to Crale, but Crale kills him. And oh yeah, in a plot element that’s never really explained, Sven is Swedish and tries to kill Crale with a harpoon. This marks the first time I have seen harpoon-fu in a western.
Hansen’s son arrives in town and soon ends up beaten unconscious and left on the back of a train leaving town. As you can expect with nearly every western, Hansen eventually returns to the town for a final showdown. This was probably a really groundbreaking plot in 1958, just the slightest bit eclipsed by more current movies and even video games like “Red Dead Redemption.” There’s also some inconsistencies and gaps of logic in this film that are strikingly noticeable.
This is a strange, powerful little film that’s worth watching if you like westerns. I’d pick “Terror in a Texas Town” to watch over “The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance” any day of the week and that only partially has to do with having watched Liberty Vallance too many times.
Now available in a Special Edition Blu-ray from Arrow Video
