Cheap Terror in a Texas Town (DVD) (Joseph H. Lewis) Price

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Customer Reviews of Terror in a Texas Town

One Star
My friend Judy gets to review this movie for me because I suggested she watch it and this is a condition of forgiveness: <
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>Since I have to give this one star, let the star be a collapsing black dwarf. <
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>Sterling Hayden gives the worst performance in any actor's life. He might as well be a talking roast beef. My friend said "lutefisk?" but his Swedish accent does not bear up under the comparison. <
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>It isn't just the movie that's bad--the score (guitar, trumpet, ?, etc.?) was obviously written by an escapee from the Insane Musicians' Mexican Rest Home. <
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>Nuff said. <
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>P.S. I have a friend who says "blame it on the director." OK. Blame it on the director.

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They all came here to see blood
Dressed in a squared-off bowler, a wool jacket that doesn't cover his wrists, a stubby tie and sporting a painfully off-key Swedish accent, Sterling Hayden is an unlikely western hero. That ten-foot steel tipped harpoon he carries around doesn't help to buff the image much, either. Then again TERROR IN A TEXAS TOWN is an unlikely western. Scripted by blacklisted Hollywood writer Dalton Trumbo (Ben Perry received credit), it's ostensibly about a land robber (Sebastian Cabot as Ed McNeil) using means fair and foul (Ned Young as hired-gun Johnny Crale) to buy out the homesteaders in the small community of Prairie City, Texas. It's also about standing united against injustice, and not letting fear conquer integrity. <
> Hayden's George Hansen comes to the Prairie City after twenty years at sea to reunite with his father and help him on the farm the elder Hansen built in his absence. It was a farm coveted by McNeil as well, and hired goon Crale saw to the "Or else" part when McNeil's offer to buy it from the elder Hansen was rebuffed. The cowed community is too intimidated by McNeil to stand up to him, strength in unity or not. It's up to the foreign outsider to discover who murdered his father - the McNeil owned sheriff isn't going to tell, and the otherwise good folks don't want to get involved. <
> I'm not usually a great fan of the message westerns of the fifties. However noble it was to fight McCarthyism, it doesn't usually make for an interesting story - too many cowardly and townspeople for my tastes, too self-righteous a tone. Half the time I find myself rooting for the bad guy. TERROR IN A TEXAS TOWN is all that, to be sure, but the acting is generally strong, the musical score is interesting, and the pace doesn't relax too much. If the movie has to preach at me, at least this one offers an interestingly illustrated sermon. <
> If Hayden is a little stony and robotic in the lead, Cabot is wonderfully malicious as the velvet gloved big money bad guy and the relatively unknown Ned Young (looks a little like Humphrey Bogart) is beautifully understated as the steel-fisted thug. The movie also contains one of the oddest curtain closing shootout in western movie history. Strong recommendation for this little gem. <
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Camp? Yaaa, you betche'.
These are the kind of movies you discover in your quest to own every western ever made. Man oh man, where to begin?

Ok, hang on...I have to stop giggling first. I dont think I've ever seen the Shrimp and Lobster Platter being served up in a saloon before but I suppose that's supposed to be a metaphor for something. Sebastian Cabot makes for a decent fancyman villain but it's hard to look classy when you're scarfing down the seafood feast. And he's got a black threaded gunman that is doing a pretty good Dr.No imitation complete with a steel right hand and long black leather toxic chemical disposal gloves. Somebody discovered oil, you see, so Sebastian has got Dr.No running around killing everybody and stealing their land. Makes sense right? Probably weren't enough U-Haul trailers to go around back then so most people just opted for a bullet.

The master plan was cranking right along until Dr.No went to visit this old Swedish guy that confronted Dr.No with a harpoon. You can see where this is headed. I guess this must have reminded Dr.No how he lost his hand to a big mouth bass or something cause he got real mad and pumped about 14 rounds into the old fella while he was laying face down in the dirt. We never learned how proficient he may have been in his younger days looking for Moby Dicks and stuff. Enter funeral durge.

Sterling Heyden finally gets to town wearing a suit that is about 2 sizes too small so he has to keep pulling his vest down over his belt. Another metaphor....Hmmmnn? The accent is hilarious and would be like Bela Lugosi playing an Apache or something. Anyway, he wants some details but the sheriff tells him it's all a mystery and he can't go to his father's ranch onacounta all that yellow tape and the Patriot Act and all. This makes Sterling pretty angry, especially when he calls room service and finds out the saloon is out of shrimp so Fred Ziffel brings him the harpoon and he goes looking for Dr. No who he figures him out of a decent meal.

Only Gregory Peck's "Shoot Out" can compare for pure silliness. 2 stars for the movie, 5 for the unintentional humor.