A Town Has Turned to Dust
June. 27,1998In a futuristic desert hamlet, a ruthless town boss lynches a falsely accused Native American teen, setting the stage for revolt and a clash with a troubled, drunken sheriff.
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Reviews
Wow! What a bizarre film! Unfortunately the few funny moments there were were quite overshadowed by it's completely weird and random vibe throughout.
There's no way I can possibly love it entirely but I just think its ridiculously bad, but enjoyable at the same time.
The film never slows down or bores, plunging from one harrowing sequence to the next.
Each character in this movie — down to the smallest one — is an individual rather than a type, prone to spontaneous changes of mood and sometimes amusing outbursts of pettiness or ill humor.
A Town Has Turned to Dust is not great, and has things wrong with it. However, I didn't think it was that bad. The storytelling is uneven, sometimes it is thoughtful and elegiac, but in others it it awkward and disjointed. The special effects are not up to scratch either, in fact they are lacking in their design and some have no reason to be there. The message the film has that racism and oppression are timeless is well-meaning but felt rather dated to me. The pacing is also rather sluggish at times so the more disjointed scenes of the film lack momentum. However, the film is shot well and has beautiful scenery. The soundtrack is decent, and the script is thankfully not cheesy but has a touch of thoughtfulness. The characters, especially Stephen Lang's are clichéd in hindsight(I have seen the drunken sheriff character so many times) but actually manage to be interesting. Ron Perlman's character is surprisingly multifaceted. Lang and Frankie Avina give good performances, but the best thing about A Town Has Turned To Dust is Perlman, while essentially ruthless you do feel some element of sympathy for him. So overall, a decent attempt at a western but doesn't quite come off as well as it could have done. 6/10 Bethany Cox
There are very few of Rod Serling's stories that don't hold much interest for me. The *Original* "A Town Has Turned To Dust" wasn't one of them.But we've seen this countless times in Hollywood: A story written by a brilliant writer gets hacked to pieces and then is handed to a director who wants to "take the story in a new direction" or "show the audience the *real* intent of its writer(s)".Heres what I want Hollywood to do with the greats of the past: Leave them ALONE. Stop standing on the shoulders of giants because most of Tinseltown is creatively bankrupt.Enough is enough.Until then I remain your,Avid Fan
Hardly original, taking elements from certain movies including Mad Max. The story in A Town Has Turned To Dust is about two classes of people trying to make a living on an earth which is almost uninhabitable and some reporter goes to earth to do a story about these people mining scrap metal. This movie is chucked full of morality and has the people looking within themselves and seeing what they've become. Some fairly big named actors could ruin their career by starring in an average made for TV movie like this but Ron Perlman seems to get away with it. Perlman is the only good thing about this movie so unless you are a total Perlman fan and need to see all his films i recommend you leave this alone and save 90 minutes of your life. Shame because with more money and a better story this film could have been good. 5/10
I write this as a warning to those who may be pondering whether or not to rent this "movie": don't.I love Twilight Zone, and am a huge fan of Rod Serling. So I was rather excited when I saw on the video case of this movie at the video store that it had been written by Serling.I turned it off after only 20 minutes. I find it extremely hard to believe that Serling could have written anything *close* to this movie. If he did, the Sci-Fi channel mutilated and amputated beyond recognition.The scenes are disjointed, the effects are cheezy, and the acting pitiful. Pick up your fav Twilight Zone episode tape instead.