Sterling Hayden testifying before the Un-American Activities Committee. “Joining the Communist Party,” he said, “was the stupidest, most ignorant thing I’ve ever done in my life.”
TERROR IN A TEXAS TOWN B
USA (80 mi) 1958 d: Joseph H. Lewis
Something of a morality tale written under the alias Ben Perry by blacklisted writer Dalton Trumbo, a member of the Hollywood Ten, in what could be considered a dry run before he became the first blacklisted writer to use his own name when he wrote the screenplay for SPARTACUS (1960), adapted from a novel by another blacklisted writer, Howard Fast, where the Romans defeat a slave rebellion, and when the captured slaves refuse to identify the leader, Spartacus, all are crucified, a reference to the actions of the House of Un-American Activities Committee. Interestingly, the lead actor of the film, Sterling Hayden, was forced to testify before the same committee after parachuting behind enemy lines during WWII to join Tito’s Yugoslavian partisans fight against European fascism, when he briefly joined the Communist Party, eventually forced to name names before the committee, something he later disavowed. The interest in TERROR IN A TEXAS TOWN comes from the gripping performance by Hayden, who plays an immigrant Swede who has been working whaling ships for thirty years sending what little money he could to his father in Texas to help buy land and a farmhouse, returning home, finally, to join his father after being away nearly 20 years. Shot in just 10 days on a B-movie budget, using a renowned innovator from the 20’s in developing the three-strip Technicolor process, Ray Rennahan, who received an Academy Award, along with Ernest Haller, for his outstanding color photography in GONE WITH THE WIND (1939), though this film remains Black and White. What’s particularly memorable about this film is the infamous use of a harpoon in a street gunfight, a near surrealist image that defies Western lore.
By the time George Hansen (Hayden) arrives in town, his father has already been shot in cold blood on his own land by Johnny Crale (Ned Young, also blacklisted, and an uncredited screenwriter), a notorious gunman dressed all in black doing the bidding of capitalist moneyman Ed McNeil (Sebastian Cabot), a land speculator who is driving everyone off their land as he’s secretly discovered the presence of oil. Anyone refusing to budge, once threatened, must face the consequences of Johnny Crale, where the town sheriff is on McNeil’s payroll as well, looking the other way, supposedly covering all tracks. For Crale, murder is a business opportunity, where he sees himself as something of a partner to McNeil, though it’s clear only one of them, behind the scenes, is handling all the business affairs, collecting all the land deeds for what is otherwise seen as barely marketable farmland. Hansen’s unexpected presence changes the playing field, as the town population has already disappeared in fear, where all that’s seen is an empty ghost town, with an immense saloon/hotel that features a long bar with no customers and an empty room except for a lone table with Crale playing cards with the saloon girl Molly (Carol Kelly), a woman who seems to be held against her will, suffering continual insults by the man with the gun. It’s Crale that explains what happened to Hansen’s father, leaving out the identity of the gunman, while the sheriff warns Hansen that the land is off limits while an on-going investigation is in effect, forcing him to stay at the hotel under the watchful eyes of McNeil and his henchmen, who beat him up and throw him on the night train out of town. In an astonishing sequence, Hansen is seen the next morning walking alone along the train tracks through a vast and empty desert landscape that initially appears to be an excellent matte painting, but as the camera holds the shot, it looks like he keeps walking into infinity.
From the outset, the music by Gerald Fried is uniquely heroic, featuring plenty of tympani drumbeats during the initial stand-off, shown as a tease before the opening credits, Terror in a Texas Town. Opening Credits - YouTube (2:58), along with an acoustic guitar and trumpet, where the boldly pronounced trumpet theme is synonymous with Hayden’s character, who quickly figures out the lay of the land, urging people to stand up for themselves instead of cowering like weaklings, as eventually their turn will come to be run off their land and who will offer help? Hayden is surprisingly persistent, showing a flair for honesty and hard truths, a stubborn man who refuses to back down, though in a memorable turn, he speaks with a Swedish accent throughout, where in Trumbo’s story, the poor immigrants are minorities being forced off their land by the ruthless interests of big business, who is the real villain in the developing West. When Crale tries to evict a Mexican neighbor of Hansen’s father, Jose Mirada (Victor Millan), emboldened by Hansen’s heroics, he decides to stand up to him, even if that means dying with dignity like a man instead of a cowardly dog. This changes the psychological reign of terror, as bullies are not used to having people stand up to them. Even Molly, seen in the role as a subservient fallen woman, warns the silent voices of the men in her town to start standing up for themselves. In a riff on the theme of HIGH NOON (1952), where a lone man must act alone against the forces of evil, Hansen grabs his father’s harpoon, the only thing he brought with him from Sweden, to exact justice. In what is truly a bizarre scene, a stand-off with a harpoon and a six-shooter, with the townspeople standing passively in back, it plays out like a samurai swordfight movie, where quick reflexes take their opponent by surprise, shown this time using different angles, followed to its rightful conclusion: Terror in a Texas Town (1958), final confrontation - YouTube (2:07). This was the director’s final film before finishing his career in television, certainly one of the strangest westerns in recollection, using plenty of overt symbolism (apparently in the 50’s moral clarity is found at the tip of a harpoon!) in an otherwise low key film that continually accentuates the frame’s noticeable emptiness, a town seething under the surface with cowardice and fear, until finally in a burst of action the tables are turned.
