Terror in a Texas Town (1958)

Sebastian Cabot is Ed McNeil, a saloon and hotel owner in Prairie City who’s discovered something no one else knows — the surrounding land is rich in oil.

So he stakes claim to that land under an old grant and starts trying to push out the homesteaders, offering them payment for their inconvenience.

When some are reluctant to leave land they’ve lived on for years, McNeil brings in an old friend, a one-handed fast gun named Johnny Crale (Nedrick Young) to make an example of someone.

Johnny’s example winds up being a stubborn farmer named Svan Hansen.

What Johnny doesn’t know is that a neighbor named Jose Miranda and his young son, Pepe, witnessed the murder. And that Sven’s song George (Sterling Hayden) is bound for Texas to go into partnership with his dad.

As it turns out, George is just as stubborn as his old man. He refuses to take payment for the land from McNeil.

Instead, he’s determined to find his father’s killer. And he wants to know what would make anyone want to acquire the land around Prairie City so desperately.

Review:

Neat little low-budget Western best remembered for the final showdown between Nedrick Young’s Johnny Crale, armed with a six-shooter, and Hayden’s George Hansen, armed only with the harpoon he used as a whaler.

Writing that is hardly a spoiler. The film opens with the two men squaring off in front of McNeil’s hotel, with Crale taunting Hansen to come ever closer so he’ll have a fair chance with his odd choice of weapon. Then the script flashes back to tell the story of what led to the showdown.

That story benefits greatly from the presence of Cabot in the role of a sophisticated swindler and Young as a gunfighter crippled in more ways than his missing right hand.

Even Hayden’s stiff performance seems in keeping with his character, that of a Swede recently immigrated to America. Of course, he doesn’t show up until 21 minutes into an 80-minute film.

For leading ladies we have Marilee Earl as McNeil’s pretty young “secretary” in her only Western and one of only five credited screen roles. Carol Kelly plays Molly, a saloon gal who travels with Johnny Crale because she’s convinced no other man will have her. She had secondary roles in two other Westerns — “The Desperadoes are in Town” and “Daniel Boone, Trailblazer,” both from 1956.

Directed by:
Joseph H. Lewis

Cast:
Sterling Hayden … George Hansen
Sebastian Cabot … Ed McNeil
Nedrick Young … Johnny Crale
Carol Kelly … Molly
Gene Martin … Pepe Mirada
Victor Millan … Jose Mirada
Ann Varela … Rosa Mirada
Tyler McVey … Sheriff Stoner
Marilee Earl … Mona Stacey
Ted Stanhope … Sven Hansen
Frank Ferguson .. Deacon Matt Holmes
Gil Lamb … Barnaby

Runtime: 80 min.

Memorable lines:

McNeil: “An event like this calls for a toast.”
Crale: “Any event calls for a toast.”

McNeil: “You realize, Johnny, that conditions have changed a great deal since you and I last worked together?”
Crale, laughing: “I can see that. You’ve got drapes on the doorway and lobster on the table. And 75 pounds more on your belly. And a new secretary. Private?”

Crale: “This is the hardest fist in Texas. This is solid steel. Somebody blew the other one off and I’ve been shooting left-handed ever since. And I use the right to slug guys who ask too many questions.”

Mona, about Crale: “He seems so strange. I don’t think I’ve met anyone like him before.”
McNeil: “That’s because you’ve never seen death walking around in the shape of a man before.”

Molly: “He doesn’t look so easy to me.”
Crale: “Nothing looks easy to you. You know why? Cause you’re so easy.”

McNeil: “Swedes in this country; they keep popping up like jackrabbits.”

George Hansen, of Crale: “Why do you stay with a man like this?”
Molly: “I stay with him because I’m what I am. I stay with him because no other man would have me. I stay with him because, as low as I am, I can turn around and see him and remember there’s somebody lower.”

Marilee Earl as Mona Stacey, Ed McNeil’s newest ‘secretary’ in Terror in a Texas Town (1958)

Frank Ferguson as Deacon Matt Holmes, trying to convince the small landowners not to give in to McNeil in Terror in a Texas Town (1958)

Carol Kelly as Molly and Nedrick Young as hired gun Johnny Crale in Terror in a Texas Town (1958)