REBEL IN TOWN is a 1956 western, the third release from Bel-Air Productions, a film company founded by Howard W. Koch and Aubrey Schenck. John Payne plays ex-Union Major John Willoughby, a man who seems to have a hatred of Confederates that seems to go beyond just opposing sides in the recent war. He’s always the first to volunteer for any posse hunting for the myriad, it seems, of ex-Rebels flooding the countryside, too many of them bent on robbery. He’s trained his young son Pete too well. The boy is proficient with a saber, practicing be-headings on the scarecrow aboard horseback. Ruth Roman is Nora Willoughby, the boy’s mother, who constantly worries about him and her husband.
It’s Pete’s birthday and Payne is headed out on another posse looking for five Rebels that held up the bank in a neighboring town,. He promise Pete he will be back for the party.
J. Carrol Naish is Bedloe Mason, an Alabaman leading his four sons through the territory. The sons are portrayed by Ben Johnson, Cain Mason(same name for the character), John Smith(of later Laramie fame), and Ben Cooper as the title character. Smith, Johnson, and Cooper ride into town to fill their water bags.
Young Pete is in town for his party and proudly sporting a pair of cap pistols given to him when he spots the Rebels filling up on water. Deciding to get them, he pulls his cap pistols and stalks them. A suspicious click behind the three causes Wesley(John Smith) to draw and fire instinctively, killing Pete. the three race out of town in a hurry, but not without a look of anguish on Ben Cooper’s face.
After the funeral, a posse sets out. They don’t want Willoughby along, knowing his state of mind. But he goes out on his own, much against his wife’s wishes. She’s afraid of what he has become, what he might do.
Gray Mason(Cooper) insists on going back to the town to see how bad the boy might be hurt, against his family’s wishes. Hos brother Wesley offers to talk him out of it. Instead, when Gray rides off, he knifes him, takes his cut of the money, and ties his brother to the horse, sending it off, and telling his family that he couldn’t stop him.
As one might expect, Willoughby finds him, takes him back to his ranch, and gets the doc. He sees his Rebel gray jacket and suspects, though his wife, knowing full well the boy was one of the three, but not the one that killed Pete, denies seeing him in town.
AS the boy heals enough to ride, it comes out that he was one of the three, a fight breaks out, young Gray gains control with his pistol, and forces Willoughby to to ride with him to town. He’s determined to clear the air, telling the truth. If they won’t accept that, then so be it.
Gray’s family is riding back to town to find Gray. They got it out of Wesley what had happened, the old man nearly killing him with a whip before the other sons stop him.
The finale is well handled. A lynch mob is ready to hang the boy, though the sheriff believes his statement. Would a guilty man even have come back to town? Willoughby doesn’t care, his wife is raging at him, and just as the lynch mob break him out, the Mason clan arrives. Four guns against the town, old man Mason ready t take as many as he can with them.
Nicely done.
Danny Arnold wrote the script and Alfred L. Werker directed this black and white film.
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