Les démons du Texas

I'm a big fan of B movie westerns, but this one just put me to sleep. I tried it again the next day, with not much better results. The acting is fine, but there's little action until the last 20 minutes or so. The tension does build up towards the end & it gets pretty good at that point, but not enough to make up for the slowness of the rest of the movie. There are some interesting turns in the story, but too much camera time is spent watching the characters slowly ride from one place to another, then slowly walk from one place to another, then slowly unmount their horses, then talk, then slowly move on to something else. I guess the word I'm looking for is "pacing." And to sum up the pacing of this movie in a word: slow! The interpersonal conflicts are not enough to keep my interest. I rate it only 5/10, & the 5 is for the acting & the character development, nothing for plot or "pacing."

Lloyd Bridges was 6' tall. Not short by any standard but hardly the 'tall' you see in this film's title.

"The Tall Texan" is sort of like taking the movie "Stagecoach" and "Treasure of the Sierra Madre" and reworking it just a bit. Just like in "Stagecoach" you have the guy who is in trouble with the law--but instead of John Wayne, it's Lloyd Bridges. It also consists of a group of folks in a stage coach on their way from one town to another. It's a lot like "Treasure of the Sierra Madre" because this group of folks stumble upon gold--and spend much of the rest of the film losing their souls in pursuit of this treasure.

There is a bit more to the movie--but basically it's almost exactly what you'd expect from the mergers of these two films. This isn't a bad thing--the movie is entertaining and like the best sci-fi and westerns (in my opinion), the film has a lot to say about human nature today just like in the 1800s. And, it also is excellent because the American-Indians are not all mindless killers but you understand and appreciate their position in this film. Well worth seeing--especially Luther Adler's highly entertaining portrayal.

That's a pretty good little western, pulled by a prestigious editor and producer, Elmo Williams. I like this little flick, mainly because of a cast very surprising in such a B picture: Lloyd Bridges, Lee J Cobb, Marie Windsor.... I really enjoyed it, thanks to some good action scenes and an adequate characters study, again not that foreseeable for such a little budget film. I don't remember having seen it before. I guess it is not widely known among western buffs and it's a bit shame because I think it deserves better. Try it if you have the opportunity to. The plot, though, has nothing special to offer.

Despite a muddled script and a barrel bottom budget, this stark little b&w western remains oddly fascinating, even among today's color fests.

Check out that barren New Mexico desert that never leaves the eye for the hour-plus runtime. It's a perfect backdrop for the six guys and one gal trapped by Comanches in the lonely spaces. The travelers are basically on-foot now that their wagon's been overturned by the warriors. Good thing a more peaceful Indian group just wants to keep them off their sacred burial grounds, but otherwise just keeps them under a watchful eye.

Worse than the Indians, the guys find gold dust while rooting around for water, thus introducing a fresh and maybe more ominous set of complications. So now they're trapped not only by Comanches but by their own mounting greed, especially when Adler finds nuggets on the sacred burial ground -- no wonder the Indians keep watching them. It's that combination that really distinguishes the plot, even though the connecting threads are often obscure (or maybe that's just me).

Anyhow, it's a distinguished cast, laid low by looming Hollywood blacklist, and willing to take on even bottom barrel Lippert Pictures and a rapid 8-day shooting schedule. It's a strappingly adventurous Lloyd Bridges, a forceful Lee J. Cobb, a sneaky little Luther Adler, and an unexpectedly compliant Marie Windsor, a long way from her usual heartless vixens. Anyway, none are particularly likable or dislikable, sort of like many everday encounters.

Note too the underlying subtext of how the panned gold and nuggets should be distributed among the six men and maybe the woman. Should it be an equal division or should each keep his own findings, or maybe even extract from others, that is, if they can agree on amounts, or, worse, just plain get away with stealing it. I'm not surprised, given the political climate of the early '50's, that such a distribution question would be raised ( competing modes of socialism or capitalism). Doing it, however, within this context is especially distinctive.

No, the flick doesn't rise to the level of hidden gem, but does manage a sort of primitive earth spell. So, don't pass it up. The compensations are there.

Robert Lippert, the force behind Lippert Films and later Regal Films, was a very resourceful Poverty Row filmmaker from the late 40s through the 50s who managed to make extremely interesting films with even more interesting casts on a low, sometimes shoestring, budget. He covered all the B film genres: Film Noir ("A Stolen Face"), Westerns ("Little Big Horn"), science fiction ("Rocket Ship X-M"), horror ("Lost Continent"), and war ("The Steel Helmet"). The studio occasionally even turned out more expensive period dramas (like "The Baron of Arizona") with class and some style.

In retrospect it seems inevitable that in the late 40s and early 50s elements of the newly emerging Film Noir genre would seep into the already well-established Western format. Memorable Noirish Westerns of the period include "Pursued," "Blood on the Moon," "The Furies," "Colorado Territory," "Ramrod," and two classics of the new hybrid genre: "Treasure of the Sierra Madre" and "Lust for Gold."

"The Tall Texan" is a minor masterpiece, interweaving themes from more traditional Westerns like "Stagecoach" with Noirish elements like lust, deceit, greed, betrayal, fate, paranoia, and irony with a disparate group of mismatched, morally ambiguous travelers thrown together by fate.

A great cast of Film Noir types (femme fatale Marie Windsor, laconic antihero Lloyd Bridges, fish-out-of-water sea captain with a shady past Lee J. Cobb, morally corrupt lawman Stanley Herrick, and ruthlessly unprincipled bottom-feeder Luther Adler) look as though they would be equally comfortable in a Twentieth Century urban setting with dingy buildings, rain-soaked streets and shadowy alleyways. However, they are also perfectly suited here, claustrophobically trapped in a metaphoric maze of giant boulders, unfriendly Indians, and their own greedy lust for gold.

Under the taut direction of Elmo Williams, the editing genius who transformed "High Noon" from a routine Western into a taut, edge-of- your-seat masterpiece, "The Tall Texan" is a highly recommended sleeper that both fans of Westerns and Film Noir will enjoy.