Easily one of the worst westerns I have ever been forced to watch. It starts out with clips from different parts of the movie, including most of the ending, and then settles down to tell the story (such as it is). First of all, though this is a town in Texas NOBODY carries or even seems to own a gun except for the bad guy. Then, this one man terrifies everyone except a Swedish ex-whaler who is basically a pacifist. Not only is the script lame but the acting is poor and unbelievable. Most of the actors seem to be just going through the motions. This is a grade D movie in my opinion. Watch it and make your own decision. I watched it because I had a friend who was an extra in the film.

A Swedish whaler comes to a Texas town to visit his father but learns the latter has been murdered. This is an unusual Western from Lewis, who directed the B-movie classic "Gun Crazy." It starts with a showdown between a gunfighter and a harpooner! and then fills in the story via flashbacks. Stanley Kubrick effectively used Hayden in "The Killing" and "Dr. Strangelove," but he was a limited actor who generally turned in wooden performances. In this film, that awkwardness actually fits in with his fish-out-of-water role. Faring better is Cabot as the heavy (literally and figuratively), but the best performance comes from Young as a black-clad gunslinger who looks and acts like Humphrey Bogart.

"Big Combo" director Joseph H. Lewis' offbeat western "Terror in a Texas Town" is a low-budget endeavor that tweaks the formula and offers a little something different. The typical protagonist who performs the heroic duties is not a stud in a 10-gallon hat with a six-gun. Sterling Hayden, who played a gun-toting lawman in "Top Gun," plays George Hansen, a Swede with a slight accent who has made a living wielding a harpoon as a whaler on a sailing ship. He has arrived to take care of his late father's property. Lewis opens the film with part of the climactic showdown that occurs later at the end when our hero totes his father's harpoon to a gun duel. Lewis doesn't let the action loiter and "Terror in a Texas Town" clocks in at 81 minutes. One flaw is the death of the villain at the hands of another villain, an act of violence which occurs off-camera and deprives us of any closure in seeing how the villain accepted death. This western imitates all those that came before it with regard to the town boss plot.Basically, this Dalton Trumbo-scripted black & white frontier epic qualifies as your standard town boss western with an elegant city-slicker (Sebastian Cabot) as the villain. He never abandons the comfort of his hotel room in town. He controls the town and has the sheriff in his pocket. The second-in-command villain is a black-clad hombre, Johnny Crale (Nedrick Young of "Gun Crazy"), strapping a matched brace of six-guns. Since can no longer shoot with his right hand, he handles his gun with his left hand. Symbolically, this tough-talking Hemingway type character is castrated because his hand doesn't work. Moreover, to enhance his evil, he wears a solid black outfit from Stetson to boots. He has a moment toward the end where he learns that some men aren't afraid to die and it rattles him. The town citizens that cower at the feet of the town boss are embroiled in a land dispute with him, and this individual—MacNeil—has obtained the legal right to all the territory around town. He has hired a former comrade, injured gunslinger Johnny Crale to help him dominate the people and the land. Later, our hero learns that oil soaks his father's land. All Hansen knows is that a man shot his father in cold blood. He finds a witness, Mexican landowner Jose Mirada (Victor Millan of "Touch of Evil"), who agrees to testify in court that he saw Crale murder Hansen's father. Mirada dies not long afterward when the black-clad killer confronts him on his property. Tragically, Mirada's wife has just given birth to a baby. Previously, she had refused to let him reveal his knowledge of Hansen's murder. All this makes it imperative that Hansen kill Crale in the most unorthodox western showdown.Altogether, despite its differences with the typical western, "Terror in a Texas" qualifies as something of an oddity. The way that Lewis and Trumbo has tweaked the formula is clever, but the overall impact is less than satisfactorily in pure entertainment terms. The William Wyler western "The Big Country," made after this one, attempted the same thing by making the protagonist a sea captain who was going to marry into a cattle owning empire. "The Big Country" was flawed, too. "Terror in a Texas" suffers from contrivance and the omission of the villain's death scene in the hotel.

Greedy land baron in the tiny western town of Prairie City wants all the ranchers off their land, using intimidation tactics and arson to get them to vacate; seems the town is swimming atop oil, and when a Swedish farmer refuses to leave, he's mowed down by the baron's hired gun. The farmer's seafaring son soon arrives, slowly realizing what he's up against and attempting to rally the rest of the residents to fight. Another lawlessness-in-the-West story, with everybody under the thumb of the villain (who naturally holds all the cards). Derivative and uncomfortable at times to watch, with a long wait before our stoic hero finally gets his dander up. Sterling Hayden's half-hearted Swedish accent is a big problem, though he cuts a sturdy, sympathetic presence on the screen and almost makes the picture worth-watching. Director Joseph H. Lewis stages most of the scenes stiffly, like a TV western, and Gerald Fried's bugle-heavy score is no help, though the rich black-and-white cinematography by Ray Rennahan is excellent. An independent production released via United Artists, the film has a bizarre start (beginning with shots from the finale, followed by shots from the movie's midsection), yet it does have a certain needling power which most assuredly gets the viewer on Hayden's side. ** from ****