TOP GUN. Fame Pictures/United Artists, 1955. Sterling Hayden, William Bishop, Karen Booth, James Millican, Regis Toomey, Hugh Sanders, John Dehner, Rod Taylor. Story & co-screenwriter: Steve Fisher. Director: Ray Nazarro.

   Terror in a Texas Town (reviewed here) was followed on TCM by Top Gun, also with Sterling Hayden, and  directed by Ray Nazarro, a Universal work-horse who at least knew how to put a picture together. The script, by Steve   Fisher, echoes High Noon and presages Man of the West in its story of Hayden as a local badman who’s been stringing with a Quantrill type (played hy John Dehner as a crafty maniac, in precisely the same style Lee J. Cobb used for Doc Tobin in Man of the West) but rides ahead to warn the folks in his home town that the baddies are coming.

   In High Noon style, the townsfolk spend most of the film debating over what to do, ostracizing Hayden and trotting out their buried grudges rather than mounting an effective defense, till Hayden and a few others have to take care of things.

   Somehow this movie really works.

   Nazarro races through the talky scenes like he knows he’s gotta keep the popcorn crowd in their seats, and makes the most of the few action bits. Although the budget is not much higher than any TV Western of its time, and the plot and dialogue are hardly memorable — barely noticeable, in fact — it’s handled with a workmanlike precision that kept me well-entertained for the brief hour of its length.