Terror in a Texas Town

Take a hired gun with a steel fist and an almost tragic awareness of his failing nerve (Young). Pit against him a stolid Scandinavian armed only with a whaling harpoon (Hayden), and the film does at least achieve the kind of bizarre climax appropriate to its low-budget format. The rest is a triumph of expression over economy: Lewis makes a virtue of the frame's emptiness (the budget, it seems, didn't run to extras), and disguises the excessive talk with unobtrusive camera movements that show a craftsmanship and pureness lacking in many more expensive films. Something of an exemplar of its type.