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From Hell to Texas is a vastly overlooked Western that came out in the 1950s, and it is a highly entertaining revenge movie that manages to do quite a few things right such as its storytelling and music. It centres on Tod Lohman (Don Murray), who is trying to escape from a group of cattlemen hunters led by Hunter Boyd (R.G. Armstrong) and his two sons, one of whom is the young Dennis Hopper. The reason why Todd is being hunted is because he killed one of Boyd’s sons, and now the entire clan is on the lookout for him. While Todd is on the run, he stumbles upon a sweet old rancher Amos Bradley (Chill Wills) and his tomboy kid Juanita (Diane Varsi). At first, while trying to meet his father he just wants to stay ahead of the Boyd clan, but after a while, he has had enough of the servo life, so he decides to take the lone wolf approach and face the entire Boyd family.
From Hell to Texas is helmed by one of the workhorse directors of the 1930s to 1960s Henry Hathaway, who is today better known for having directed a pair of Westerns with John Wayne, The Sons of Katie Elder and The True Grit, which are both quite serviceable late-period John Wayne films. Did you know that John Wayne won an Oscar for the latter? He also dabbled in film noir and a couple of other styles, but the Western is where he really left his mark. The same can be said about him in this feature film as he tackles a different facet of the genre. On the face of it, From Hell to Texas looks like it could be just another Western, and indeed it has many elements that have been seen many times in the genre: a ruthless cattle baron and his family, a man on the run, a kindly old man etc. But From Hell to Texas is also a well-shot film with numerous great instances of camerawork. Shots seem to come from every angle and with this variety, Hathaway can make the material feel fresh and keep the audience guessing.
Yet, aside from the camerawork, he incorporates narrative very well. But aside from the film’s camerawork, the Death of a Texas Cowgirl tells the story well. Hathaway displays considerable skill in talking about the story here at the right time. One particular seat is how the film portrays Tom as a man in search of a family. Besides the death of one of the Boyd family members, which triggers the events of the plot, and visually conceiving the Bradley family as a substitute family, this is a need to belong and a device to tell a story. This is in addition to his directorial storytelling craft, which comprises the action. The last shootout in the film is collectible-grade material. This makes for an exciting scene with a lot of exciting feet behind the camera.
This affair depicts the core struggle between community and individualism policemen indeed has the capacity to bring down a whole gang, and the great restraint put by one man is required. While it is clear that such capacity serves a community, the need to set the scene this way opens opportunities for other interpretations. In this particular case, the scene does contain a depiction of violence, and maybe even the most violent one out of the bunch of Code Era Westerns. However, it is not as painful as the rest and, in fact, much more pleasant. It’s as though the movie is not being gratuitously violent for the use of violence.
The movie score by Daniele Amfitheatrof was a beautiful experience as well. He manages to make the film feel monumental while at the same time intimate. The blending of voices into the score is particularly interesting for here because it does serve as some kind of forerunner of Morricone’s more popular Spaghetti Western scores. And for the most part, the acting is really good here. No one really steals the show mind you, but they do all turn in solid performances. Really, the biggest problem the movie has is that it feels too short. From Hell to Texas is the type of movie, that has a lot of story in it, and it seems like a story that should be told in a more grand, epic, sweeping, and longer fashion. But here, the problem is, that the movie is nearly a hundred minutes long so it really does feel like the story is being told in a rushed manner. This does not make it a bad movie, From Hell to Texas gets a lot right, but it does make it feel like a film that has been edited down to a version where it had a lot more to say and that is distracting.
From Hell to Texas is a simple yet convoluted film that contains many useful elements, and is from its core a lean and mean type of film. The movie had wonderful performances, the directing was good, and the score was great as well. But it also feels as if there is so much more in this ‘movie in a box’ than there actually is. If it had been given more time to breathe, it would have transformed into the amazing piece of art it had been hiding. However, every movie needs to be examined in its own context. From that standpoint, it is an enjoyable and brilliantly crafted film in the range. Check it out!
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