Cuando el destino nos alcance

Hardly original, taking elements from certain movies including Mad Max. The story in A Town Has Turned To Dust is about two classes of people trying to make a living on an earth which is almost uninhabitable and some reporter goes to earth to do a story about these people mining scrap metal. This movie is chucked full of morality and has the people looking within themselves and seeing what they've become. Some fairly big named actors could ruin their career by starring in an average made for TV movie like this but Ron Perlman seems to get away with it. Perlman is the only good thing about this movie so unless you are a total Perlman fan and need to see all his films i recommend you leave this alone and save 90 minutes of your life. Shame because with more money and a better story this film could have been good. 5/10

A Town Has Turned to Dust is hand above the average schlock that comes out under the handle "A Sci-Fi Channel Original Movie". Honestly, with their key demographic, why do they foist things like "Bombshell" and "Cyberjack" on us?

This movie, however, is different. Apparently based on a Rod Serling script , A Town Has Turned To Dust combines strong story telling, subtle effects, and well wrangled acting to form an enjoyable and thoughtful story.

Ron Perlman's character is surprisingly multi-faceted and can be identified with though his actions might be considered reprehensible.

All in all, this was a very strong piece of film making. I hope we see more of its style on the Sci-Fi Channel.

A Town Has Turned to Dust is not great, and has things wrong with it. However, I didn't think it was that bad. The storytelling is uneven, sometimes it is thoughtful and elegiac, but in others it it awkward and disjointed. The special effects are not up to scratch either, in fact they are lacking in their design and some have no reason to be there. The message the film has that racism and oppression are timeless is well-meaning but felt rather dated to me. The pacing is also rather sluggish at times so the more disjointed scenes of the film lack momentum. However, the film is shot well and has beautiful scenery. The soundtrack is decent, and the script is thankfully not cheesy but has a touch of thoughtfulness. The characters, especially Stephen Lang's are clichéd in hindsight(I have seen the drunken sheriff character so many times) but actually manage to be interesting. Ron Perlman's character is surprisingly multifaceted. Lang and Frankie Avina give good performances, but the best thing about A Town Has Turned To Dust is Perlman, while essentially ruthless you do feel some element of sympathy for him. So overall, a decent attempt at a western but doesn't quite come off as well as it could have done. 6/10 Bethany Cox

There are very few of Rod Serling's stories that don't hold much interest for me. The *Original* "A Town Has Turned To Dust" wasn't one of them.

But we've seen this countless times in Hollywood: A story written by a brilliant writer gets hacked to pieces and then is handed to a director who wants to "take the story in a new direction" or "show the audience the *real* intent of its writer(s)".

Heres what I want Hollywood to do with the greats of the past: Leave them ALONE. Stop standing on the shoulders of giants because most of Tinseltown is creatively bankrupt.

Enough is enough.

Until then I remain your,

Avid Fan

Two hundred years in the future, in a radioactive scrap metal mining town on the almost completely abandoned, draught ridden, dying planet Earth, a young man of a "second class race" is lynched for the supposed beating and attempted rape of the wife of the town boss before he can be taken off planet to the new home of humanity for trial. The act exhumes an old guilt that begins the final disintegration of a town already half buried in the ugly dust of racism and prejudice.

This was a nice surprise as Sci-Fi Channel movies are hit and miss. Steven Lang does an excellent job as the useless, haunted town drunk and Sheriff Harvey Denton. The "Cain and Abel-ish" brother like relationship between his character and Ron Perlman's town boss and mob ring leader Jerry Paul is well done by both actors. You can see it there dying, being killed by time, guilt, booze and power. The abusive love-hate relationship between Jerry Paul and his wife Maya (Barbara Jane Reams) is very realistic, scary in its unhealthy depths of possession and desire to care and be cared for.

Definitely worth a buy.