Post by petrolino on Feb 4, 2018 3:17:09 GMT
'Terror In A Texas Town' is an existential comic book western written by Dalton Trumbo who was blacklisted at the time it was made. Greedy landowner McNeil (Sebastian Cabot) uses hired gun Johnny Crale (Nedrick Young) to rain down terror on the citizens of a small town in Texas. A stranger in town decides to fight back ...
There's a fascinating backstory that's been spun behind this production. Director Joseph H. Lewis was set to retire when Nedrick Young handed him the script by Trumbo, both men having been blacklisted. Lewis agreed to do it as his last picture because he was retiring which nullified the very real threat of repercussions within the industry. Sterling Hayden is lights out intense as Swedish whaler George Hansen, a harpoon specialist who could give Iceland's Captain Petur (Gunnar Hansen) from 'Reykjavik Whale Watching Massacre' (2009) a land run for his money. Hansen is like Max Von Sydow x 10, a man determined to do the right thing. He's up against a pair of odious criminals who come across like pantomime villains but there's sultry excess in the forms of saloon swinger Molly (Carol Kelly) and private secretary Mona (real-life Texan temptress Marilee Earle).
"I like a rod of solid steel. There's none more solid in Texas."
There's a fascinating backstory that's been spun behind this production. Director Joseph H. Lewis was set to retire when Nedrick Young handed him the script by Trumbo, both men having been blacklisted. Lewis agreed to do it as his last picture because he was retiring which nullified the very real threat of repercussions within the industry. Sterling Hayden is lights out intense as Swedish whaler George Hansen, a harpoon specialist who could give Iceland's Captain Petur (Gunnar Hansen) from 'Reykjavik Whale Watching Massacre' (2009) a land run for his money. Hansen is like Max Von Sydow x 10, a man determined to do the right thing. He's up against a pair of odious criminals who come across like pantomime villains but there's sultry excess in the forms of saloon swinger Molly (Carol Kelly) and private secretary Mona (real-life Texan temptress Marilee Earle).
"Prior to the 1970s’ renaissance of interest in expressionist style, Joseph H. Lewis was simply a B-movie director for hire who had made his way up the Hollywood ladder the hard way, with a hefty backlog of cut-rate westerns for Poverty Row studios. But Lewis widened his expressive range in other genres as well, his 38 features encompassing early low-budget experiments in horror (Invisible Ghost, 1941), melodrama (Secrets of a Co-Ed, 1942), musicals (The Minstrel Man, 1944), costume adventures (The Swordsman, 1947), comic fantasy (The Return of October, 1949) and combat dramas (Retreat, Hell!, 1951), capped by a final western that marks a surprising and specifically political act (Terror in a Texas Town, 1958). But not one of Lewis’ films can be dismissed as unworthy of viewing, not one lacks artistic imagination, and not one behaves completely according to the rules. Like Alfred Hitchcock, Lewis worked on all his scripts (but only once took onscreen credit, for Bombs Over Burma, 1942). Typically, his characters find themselves trapped in sexual obsession (Secrets of a Co-Ed, Gun Crazy, The Big Combo) or conflicted identity (So Dark the Night, A Lady Without Passport, A Lawless Street [1955]) or ethical crisis (The Undercover Man, The Seventh Cavalry [1956], The Halliday Brand [1957]). In line with other postwar thrillers from Gordon Douglas’ I Was a Communist For the F.B.I. (1951) to Elia Kazan’s On the Waterfront (1954), his scripts often oppose private security to public duty, calling for citizens to testify against corruption, most obviously in The Undercover Man, The Big Combo and A Lawless Street."
- Robert Keser, Senses Of Cinema
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Lewis lays tracks like crazy paving, employing multiple series of extreme close-ups that are, well, Bergmanesque, as well as inventive visual set-ups that play with foreground and background. I really like the shot of Hansen walking back to town down a train track, offering a potent symbol of the rapid industrialisation that threatened the Old West. Sterling Hayden convinces as a Scandinavian whaler who's itching to leave the ocean behind and pitch-up permanently on land; his final shot, - Robert Keser, Senses Of Cinema
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sprawling on the ground
, is one for the ages. Check it out!
