Rebel in Town

The happy, upbeat singalong over the opening titles is not a sign of the tone to come in Alfred L. Werker’s Rebel in Town: this is a dark film about punishment in all its forms, heightened by the postwar cynicism that typically colors noir, but this time the war in question is the Civil War, America’s most lethal. Set in 1865, the film’s engine revs up when a boy is accidentally shot by a member of a gang riding through town, blasted backwards 30 feet and pronounced dead on the day of his birthday party. The film here takes on Biblical weightiness: a father’s vengeance, another father’s disgrace, brothers fighting to the death in horse dung, one bound and whipped. A mustached John Payne plays John Willoughby, father of the killed boy, and J. Carrol Naish plays Bedloe Mason, father of the killer, Wesley Mason (John Smith), who not only shifts blame onto his Confederate soldier brother Gray (Ben Cooper) but quite literally stabs him in the back. When the Willoughbys find the near-death Gray and nurture him back to health in their home, Nora Willougby (Ruth Roman) doesn’t tell her husband that she recognizes the boy as one of the gang members, her secret exchanges with the boy approximating a romantic affair. (A homoerotic connection between Mason and John isn’t out of the question either.) Gordon Avil’s cinematography creates luxurious shadows, particularly in the evening outdoor scenes and during a final chase through the barns, but even more inventive is Les Baxter’s score, which introduces plaintive guitar strumming at some of the most emotionally intense moments but kicks into a high gear of excitement for the final knife fight.