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Dir. Joseph H. Lewis
USA
The old motto is to never bring a knife to a gunfight. At the
beginning of this western from the director of The Big Combo (1955), a man brings a harpoon to a duel, so large
that it makes the one from Strike of
Thunderkick Tiger (1982), the film I reviewed a month ago, look like a
toothpick. Said man is George Hansen (Sterling
Hayden), who comes to a tiny town only to discover his father was killed. As
he investigates the cause of this, he begins to be wary of an enforcer (Sebastian Cabot) for a rich tycoon who
has no qualms about using force. The film is only seventy seven minutes long, a
lean, solid tale. Unlike The Big Combo,
which undermined its point as film noir by having its protagonist get on his
soapbox and rant for no justifiable reason when the plot laid it out for him,
this is too short to allow itself to be bogged down by bloat in the dialogue
and events, and in the character of Hansen has a man with a likeable personality
who just wants to claim his father’s farm and nothing else.
Hayden is good in
his main role, passing off, and I am serious with this comment, as a lovable
bear of a man who yet has the curved-from-cliff face of a Lee Marvin who will snap when his immense patience is broken. Cabot
is just as good thought, his villainous character allowed to have time to flesh
him out alongside his love interest Molly (Carol
Kelly), showing him as a heartless villain who yet is vulnerable and could
have been a great man if he tried. As I watch more westerns, I am finally
getting more enamoured by them, not just the later ones post-Serios Leone and Sam Peckinpah, as the good ones like this show both good genre
storytelling and exhibit American culture and moral tales through a genre that
has been repeated hundreds of times and yet still be watchable. Terror In A Texas Town does not attempt
to be more than a short length western, and succeeds incredibly well.
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