Sunday, September 10, 2017

TERROR IN A TEXAS TOWN: DO THE RIGHT THING



I’d never heard of this film until it was announced that it was being released. Looking it up in imdb .com I was able to read the synopsis and a few reviews of the film but still had never seen it on TV, read about it anywhere else or knew much about it. So when it arrived I was curious to find out what it was all about.

The movie opens with the ending, a showdown between a gunslinger and a man carrying a harpoon. Curious yet? It then moves into flashback mode to tell how we got here. Money grubbing hotel owner McNeil (Sebastian Cabot) is in the middle of forcing the local farmers to sell him their land. When they don’t cooperate their barns suddenly catch fire and they are beaten. With right hand man and gunslinger Crale (Nedrick Young) enforcing his will, no one has much of a chance standing up to him.

When land owner Sven Hanson (Ted Stanhope) attempts to do so, Crale kills him in his tracks. From then on no one attempts to prevent the sales McNeil intends. And then Sven’s son George (Sterling Hayden) arrives. Fresh from his time at sea he’s disheartened to learn of his father’s death. He seeks answers and tries to find out what happened. And in the end he intends to face off the same threat that his father did, with or without help from the locals.

In reading on the film there is a number of things to know about what was going on behind the scenes. First off the script was written under a pseudonym by Dalton Trumbo, one of the blacklisted writers in Hollywood at the time. Young was had also been blacklisted. Director Joseph Lewis was about to retire and with this being his last film he didn’t care about the standings of both men and set out to make the movie.

The film may seem like a simple tale of evil land baron taking on dirt poor farmers but it reality it was as much a metaphor of the times as the higher profile film HIGH NOON. The townspeople are being railroaded into doing something they don’t want to, fearful of repercussions if they stand up to the powers that be. Only one man is willing to do so even if they won’t support him.

The story is well written and offers less black and white characters than one would imagine. The character of Crale is especially interesting. He’s the bad guy, the man in the black hat, the gunslinger we’ve all come to associate with all things evil. And yet here, he simply wants to make enough so that he and his girlfriend and saloon gal Molly can leave and find a place of their own. The lines here between all out good and bad are blurred with the exception of McNeil.

Still, the movie felt like it moved along slowly. The low budget is apparent with sets that seem like leftovers from other productions as a cost cutting method. The photography is good one moment and washed out the next. The supporting actors do a decent enough job but nothing to write home about. In the end the story behind the scenes will make this a movie that will be sought after by film historians and lovers of westerns but not something the average viewer will rush to find.

As with a number of films they’ve released, Arrow Video has chosen to offer this long lost film in the best reproduction possible, a 2k restoration from original film elements. The extras on hand make this edition shine. Included are an introduction by Peter Stanfield, author of HOLLYWOOD, WESTERNS AND THE 1930s, scene-select commentaries by Stanfield, the theatrical trailer, reversible original and newly commissioned artwork by Vladimir Zimakov and with the first pressing only an illustrated collector’s booklet featuring new writing by Glenn Kenny.

Click here to order.

No comments:

Post a Comment