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Without a doubt, American director Joseph H. Lewis is best remembered for his contributions to film noir, particularly his 1950 classic Gun Crazy and 1955’s The Big Combo. Arrow Academy has been restoring some of the director’s forgotten titles, having recently released Lewis’ final narrative feature, 1958’s Terror in a Texas Town (the director worked on various television shows until his retirement in the mid-1960s) and now revisiting some of his forgotten 1940s items. His UK set 1945 film My Name is Julia Ross is an excellent and extremely efficient take on the gaslight subgenre, which was later remade by Arthur Penn in 1987 as Dead of Winter.…...

By Rob Hunter

"What is this for a country where a man is killed and nobody knows anything, nobody does anything?"

The article Sixty Years Later, ‘Terror in a Texas Town’ Remains a Sad Reflection of Today’s America appeared first on Film School Rejects.

On paper it’s a western with everything — a major star, decent supporting players, a cult director and sideways references to the blacklisting years. But even with its ya-gotta-see-it-to-believe-it high noon showdown scene, Joseph H. Lewis’s last feature film is still a lower-tier United Artists effort. Sterling Hayden goes up against Sebastian Cabot and Nedrick Young, armed with a, with a . . . aw, you probably know already.

Terror in a Texas Town

Blu-ray

Arrow Academy

1958 / B&W / 1:85 widescreen / 80 min. / Street Date July 11, 2017 / Available from Arrow Video / 39.95

Starring: Sterling Hayden, Sebastian Cabot, Carol Kelly, Eugene Martin, Nedrick Young, Victor Millan, Frank Ferguson, Marilee Earle, Byron Foulger, Glenn Strange.

Cinematography: Ray Rennahan

Original Music: Gerald Fried

Written by Dalton Trumbo, fronted by Ben Perry

Produced by Frank N. Seltzer

Directed by Joseph H. Lewis

Auteurists in the early 1970s championed directors like Phil Karlson, Budd Boetticher and Anthony Mann. These stylists...

Terror In A Texas Town will be Available on Blu-ray and DVD on July 11th From Arrow Video

For his 41st and final feature film, Joseph H. Lewis was able to combine the two genres in which he had excelled. The man in the director’s chair for My Name is Julia Ross, Gun Crazy and The Big Combo, Lewis was one of the all-time greats in film noir. But he was also a fine director of Westerns, having made A Lawless Street, 7th Cavalry and The Halliday Brand, all of which – especially the last – remain underrated. Terror in a Texas Town would bring his noir sensibilities to the American West, resulting in one of his finest works.

McNeil (Sebastian Cabot, The Time Machine) is a greedy hotel owner who wants to take control of Prairie City, the Texas town of the title. Keen to drive the local farmers of their land,...