Terror In A Texas Town (1958)

The story for this is really a quite conventional “Evil-Land Baron trying to force out the settlers with the aid of a hired gun” plot, but is transformed into a top-notch film by a variety of unique and interesting twists. The hero (Sterling Hayden), a Swedish sailor, arrives into town to find that his father has been gunned down in mysterious circumstances. A Mexican (or possibly Indian - it wasn’t 100% clear to me) rancher (played by Victor Millan) knows both the assailant and the motive but has been terrified into silence.

There are a few interesting aspect to the story. First, a lot is made of the foreignness of both Hayden and Millan, and how because they are outsiders they are unable to get legal justice since the courts are controlled by the American villains. Second, the hero is not a gunfighter, he is reluctant to use violence to achieve his aims until finally pushed to it, and even then his choice of weapon is his whaling hook rather than his gun. Third is the interesting portrayal of the main villain (Sebastian Cabot) and especially his hired gun (Nedrick Young). Cabot sees that the acceptability of violence is coming to an end and only reluctantly hires Young to perform the minimum violence needed, and this squeamishness earns Young’s contempt. Young is out-of-time both in terms of being a hired gun in an era when that role is increasingly obsolete, and due to an injury to his gunfighting hand, which he tries his best to hide.

An excellent, mid-tier (budget-wise) 50s Western that I highly recommend.

(See also “Companeros”, which borrows significant elements from this film while telling quite a different story.)