Review #1,249: 'Terror in a Texas Town' (1958)

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.


Directed by: Joseph H. Lewis
Starring: Sterling Hayden, Nedrick Young, Sebastian Cabot, Carol Kelly, Eugene Mazzola
Country: USA

Rating: ****

Tom Gillespie

Review #686: 'The Godfather' (1972)

Having only been born 12 years after the release of The Godfather, I don't know if audiences at the time realised just how influential the film would become in later years. It has been homaged, parodied and copied so much - Don Corleone's husky voice and prominent chin especially - that it's a miracle it's managed to hold onto its status as one of the finest pictures Hollywood has ever produced. It's also rather astonishing that the film was ever made at all, given the troubled production amidst a meddling Paramount (who pretty much held a gun to director Francis Ford Coppola's head throughout). But watching it again, 41 years after it was made, it's just as beautiful and thrilling as it was when I first saw it.

Don Vito Corleone (Marlon Brando) is the Sicilian head of the Corleone crime family. His eldest son Sonny (James Caan) is his short-tempered and hot-headed heir, the polar opposite to the youngest son Michael (Al Pacino), who is college-educated and has just returned from serving in World War II. When the Don refuses an offer to invest in the booming drugs trade by drug baron Virgil 'The Turk' Sollozzo (Al Lettieri) - who is backed by Corleone rivals the Tattaglia's - he is gunned down and almost killed. With his father in hospital and still in danger, Michael finds himself slowly being drawn into the family business he vowed to stay away from.

Head of Paramount at the time Bob Evans said he wanted to "smell the spaghetti" and hired the relatively inexperienced Coppola, who is of Sicilian heritage, to direct the film, in order to give the film authenticity. From the opening scene, it is evident that the gamble paid off. The wedding of the Don's daughter, Connie (Talia Shire), is a textbook guide on how to introduce characters to an audience. This long, gorgeous segment of the film establishes the Corleone's sense of family importance. They are all cold-blooded killers, perhaps, but they are loyal and have a code. It's also fascinating to see the hierarchy within organised crime, something that seems embedded into our conscience now after countless films involving 'made' men and capo's.

But it's a combination of many elements that makes The Godfather so great. The patient, controlled approach, Coppola and novel author Mario Puzo's celebrated, Oscar-winning screenplay, Nino Rota's powerful score, the subtle dark comedy ("leave the gun, take the cannoli") the magnificent set-pieces (Michael searching for the gun in the cafe restroom is still nerve-jangling) , and perhaps most of all, the acting talent on display. Brando, Pacino and Robert Duvall (as adopted son and consigliere Tom Hagen) can boast career-defining performances from the picture, and can celebrate film careers spanning decades and countless awards. There's little I can say about The Godfather that hasn't already been said, but this is one of the true undisputed classics of American cinema.


Directed by: Francis Ford Coppola
Starring: Marlon Brando, Al Pacino, James Caan, Richard S. Castellano, Robert Duvall, Al Lettieri, Diane Keaton, Sterling Hayden
Country: USA

Rating: *****

Tom Gillespie