Terror in a Texas Town

George Hansen is a Swedish whaler who comes to Texas after years to see his father and learns that he has been killed. A businessman has taken the town over; he is driving the farmers off to buy the land cheap, and killing them where necessary, because there is oil under it. Hansen cannot use a gun. All he has is his harpoon. Joseph H. Lewis directs. Sterling Hayden plays Hansen. The screenplay was written by the blacklisted Dalton Trumbo and credited at the time to another name. Its known scene is the ending: a duel with a harpoon. Facing an armed man on the main street with a harpoon is an image with no other instance in the western, and the film is remembered for it. The subject is land and oil. The fight is not about honour but about property, and the film builds it in openly economic terms. Joseph H. Lewis worked in low budget films and is known for Gun Crazy; this was his last for cinema. The hired killer is outside the type; his hand is crippled, he is getting old, and he wants to stop. It runs under eighty minutes and never wanders. Who it is for: viewers who like low budget westerns and unusual instances of a genre. Who it is not for: the production is small, the acting is flat, and most characters are one dimensional.