Wonderful character development!

Great visuals, story delivers no surprises

Absolutely brilliant

I enjoyed watching this film and would recommend other to give it a try , (as I am) but this movie, although enjoyable to watch due to the better than average acting fails to add anything new to its storyline that is all too familiar to these types of movies.

While the eye-catching poster promises "Iron Hooked Fury!" and pitting a harpoon against a six-gun, the curiously forgotten B-movie western Terror in a Texas Town, directed by Joseph H. Lewis, is a positively downbeat little movie. Starting with a handsome, square- jawed hero walking into battle with a clad-in-black gunslinger, it appears at first glance that we are on familiar ground. But the film then flashes back, and all the western tropes we had been expecting are subtly subverted, similar in many ways to Nicholas Ray's groundbreaking masterpiece Johnny Guitar four years previous. The screenwriter is credited as Ben Perry - a name you'll likely be unfamiliar with. Yet this was in fact a front for Dalton Trumbo, the great Oscar-winning writer who was then under scrutiny from Senator McCarthy and blacklisted from Hollywood. With this knowledge, the oddness of Terror in a Texas Town suddenly makes sense.In the - you guessed it - small Texas town of Prairie City, the hard-working farmers earning little from their land are struggling to fight off the advances of the unscrupulous land baron McNeil (Sebastian Cabot), who is using his wealth and influence to buy up the whole area for reasons not immediately clear. Some of the townsfolk are playing hard-ball, refusing to give their homes and livelihood to a man they never see. So McNeil brings in tough-as- nails gunslinger Johnny Crale (an outstanding Nedrick Young), a broken career-criminal who is happy to caress his pistol whenever a deal doesn't go his way. He murders Swede Sven Hansen (Ted Stanhope) when he refuses to sign a contract. A day later, his sailor son George (Sterling Hayden) arrives to greet the father he hasn't seen in over a decade, only the learn of his murder and that the land left to him is now the property of a greedy businessman.It quickly becomes clear that the hero-versus-villain showdown the opening scene promised us will be nothing like we expected. The dashing American hero is in fact an immigrant without the skills of a quick-draw or the wits to take on McNeil on his own, and the black leather-donning Crale may just be in the midst of developing a conscience after years of killing and the loss of his gun hand. What makes Terror in a Texas Town so interesting is the way it merely hints at the two central characters' personalities and past, leaving these could-be archetypes as intriguing enigmas. Trumbo makes a point of highlighting the ranchers' ignorance of McNeil's Machiavellian role in the events, choosing instead to focus their hatred on the muscle. It isn't difficult to imagine that Trumbo's exile and unforgivable treatment at the hands of his own country didn't influence this apparently off-the-conveyor-belt B-picture. It has been unfairly forgotten by the decades, but Terror in a Texas Town is ripe for re-discovery as one of the strangest and most compelling westerns American has ever produced.

The common man, in this respect a Whaler from Sweden, versus slick and soulless Capitalists. The greedy, rich Men representing the System can purchase fancy attire, and expensive and flashy weapons of destruction. But our lower class type of an immigrant sod buster dresses in plain clothes and is forced to use the tools of his trade to defend his honor and exact revenge.There are no subtle representations here and it is all framed like Artful arrogance and what this stylish B-Western presented is nothing less than one of the most unique and classy Proletariat Pictures from a decade that was full of mediocre meanderings from others by the wagon load.This Norish Western was the last for an unsung B-Movie Master Joseph H. Lewis and his underrated work was missed but not forgotten among Film Historians and Movie Lovers. This is not as good as The Big Combo (1955) or Gun Crazy (1950), but very few Films are. He was great at entertaining and messaging with a flat out frenzy of style and pomp that made His Movies, and this one is certainly no exception, quite different and much better than most.

When oil is discovered on the properties of peaceful homesteaders, fat-cat Sebastian Cabot sends his one-handed gunman to terrorize them into leaving. When stubborn Swedish whaler Sterling Hayden's father is killed by them, he takes on the bad guys with only a harpoon and the truth!The premise is a bit familiar but the story is artfully told with great acting by all involved. Hayden plays an offbeat, interesting, and unconventional western hero and Cabot is a wonderfully sleazy villain. However, Academy Award winning screenwriter Nedrick Young gives the film's best performance as Cabot's vile hired killer.Entertaining from start to finish, this is a really compelling low-budget movie that really knows what buttons to push, especially as Hayden tries to get his neighbors to break their fearful code of silence.The final showdown, glimpsed in the opening scene, is both memorable and exciting

There was so much gunsmoke in Hollywood, 1958, the producers of this low-budget indie can hardly be blamed for the harpoon gimmick. All in all, the movie is neither the best nor the worst of oaters of that day, as some folks hold. It does have points of interest, but overall the 80 minutes lacks the intensity that many of the elements promise. For example, Ned Young's killer dresses the part, postures the part, and leers the part, but the total never gets beyond the impersonation stage. There's no real sense that he means it. Compare Young's black clad gunman with his counterpart, the fearsomely memorable Jack Palance of Shane (1953), as illustration. Then too, as another reviewer notes, Cabot's scheming mastermind fails to convey much beyond a grumpy old fat guy waiting for dinner. Thus the needed sense of evil-incarnate never really materializes, despite the posturing. In fact, in my little book, it's Carol Kelly as the conflicted Molly who delivers the movie's one really convincing performance.Now, I have as much respect for director Lewis as the next old movie buff, particularly for that overlooked Korean War drama Retreat, Hell! (1952). However, it looks like he was just going through the motions here, especially in his work with the actors. As other reviewers note, the movie does have points of interest absent from other little Westerns of the day, including that stunning back shot of Hayden stalking down railroad tracks that stretch to infinity-- a memorable visual. Nonetheless, despite the many script opportunities and dramatic situations, the action never really gels into the riveting essay on greed and evil that writer Trumbo evidently desires. In passing— the low-budget Western was a favorite refuge for those in Hollywood blacklisted by HUAC, like Trumbo and Young, or those compromised, like Hayden. My favorite is The Tall Texan (1953), not a very good movie, but featuring a whole array of compromised Hollywood talent looking for a needed payday. Watching such stalwart city types as Lee J. Cobb and Luther Adler tell their horses to giddy-up amounts to a real hoot. But unfortunately, it hasn't turned up on the movie channels lately. Then again, maybe that's fortunately.