A hooded killer strikes terror into the heart of post-World War II Texarkana…
THE TOWN THAT DREADED SUNDOWN (1976). Cast: Ben Johnson (Captain J. D. Morales), Andrew Prine (Deputy Norman Ramsey), Dawn Wells (Helen Reed), Jimmy Clem (Sergeant Mel Griffin), Jim Citty (Police Chief R. J. Sullivan), Charles B. Pierce (Patrolman A. C. Benson, called “Spark Plug”), Robert Aquino (Sheriff Otis Barker), Cindy Butler (Peggy Loomis), Mason Andres (Reverend Harden), Earl E. Smith (Dr. Kress), Vern Stierman (Narrator), Bud Davis (The Phantom Killer). Director: Charles B. Pierce. Producer: Charles B. Pierce. Executive Producer: Samuel Z. Arkoff. Screenplay: Earl E. Smith. Music: Jaime Mendoza Nava. Cinematography: James W. Roberson. Color — 90 min. Showtime: Saturday March 14 11:00pm PST/2:00am EST
Rural themes and country stories were always good for business in Hollywood, whether they were true (SERGEANT YORK, the AMERICAN SNIPER of 1941) or made-up whole cloth (the countless Ma and Pa Kettle comedies produced between 1949 and 1957, which suggested “simple folk” were often far wiser than us city slickers). Exploitation filmmakers used the Deep South as a veritable backlot for such grimy drive-in releases as POOR WHITE TRASH (1957), THE INTRUDER (1962), SCUM OF THE EARTH (1963), and MUDHONEY (1965) — to name just a few. The practice was carried over beyond the demise of the studio system thanks in part to the star ascendancy of the Florida-raised Burt Reynolds, who played an urbanite lost in the Georgia sticks in DELIVERANCE (1972) and then brought a reliable good old boy charm to such follow-up hits as WHITE LIGHTNING (1973), GATOR (1976), and SMOKEY AND THE BANDIT (1977). Revenge, and its fancier cousin vengeance, were also marketable bullet points with the success of WALKING TALL (1973), whose torn-from-the-headlines veracity ushered in a succession of true (and true-ish) crime films on the order of MACON COUNTY LINE (1974), DERANGED (1974), THE TEXAS CHAIN SAW MASSACRE (1974), and THE TOWN THAT DREADED SUNDOWN (1976).
First the facts: One of the great American unsolved mysteries is the identity of The Phantom Killer, aka The Phantom Slayer, aka the Moonlight Killer, perpetrator of the Texarkana Moonlight Murders, a series of brutal attacks on couples that plagued the Texas/Arkansas border from February to May of 1946. At least eight people were set upon by the hooded culprit, whose rampage left five dead, perhaps more. And then he (or, hell, she) just stopped. The case stuck in the craw of Lower America for decades until Arkansas resident Charles B. Pierce decided to make a movie about it. A DIY filmmaker as a boy and Louisiana weatherman, Pierce moved to Texarkana and started an ad agency, eventually directing TV spots for local businesses and hosting a TV show for kids. Having heard tales of a strange creature haunting the backwoods of Fouke, Arkansas, Pierce insinuated himself among the locals there, interviewed witnesses, and cobbled together the screenplay for his feature film directorial debut, THE LEGEND OF BOGGY CREEK (1972). Half-documentary, half-bullshit, BOGGY CREEK was made for peanuts (with a crew of high school volunteers) but grossed a gen-u-ine mint, earning $55,000 in its first three weeks of release; Pierce later sold a 50% interest in the film to the New Orleans-based independent distributor Howco, which paid him a whopping $1,000,000-plus to seal the deal. (For Howco, it was money well spent: THE LEGEND OF BOGGY CREEK went on to collect $25,000,000 from the curious and those naturally predisposed to believing in Bigfoot and Bigfoot-like cryptidae.) Having sucked greedily from the nipple of early success, Pierce turned his profits into a run of more professional-looking films, to which he attracted a cadre of (mostly) aging Hollywood actors. The moonshine romp BOOTLEGGERS (1974) starred Slim Pickens and a young Jaclyn Smith, WINTERHAWK (1975) Lief Erickson, Woody Strode, Denver Pyle, and Elish Cook, Jr. and THE WINDS OF AUTUMN (1976) Jack Elam, Dub Taylor, and Jeanette Nolan. THE TOWN THAT DREADED SUNDOWN made good use of Ben Johnson as the Texas lawman who takes on the case of the Phantom Killer, while bring back Andrew Prine (who appeared in William Girdler’s GRIZZLY the same year), and former GILLIGAN’S ISLAND castaway Dawn Wells, who had both acted for him before.
Given a quasi-documentary approach and promising to have changed only the names, THE TOWN THAT DREADED SUNDOWN is a true product of its time and milieu, crafted to appeal to the lowest common denominator, offering a little something for everyone, and perhaps even cognizant of the fact that its depiction of true events would not be just a time-killer in its place of origin. It tries to be scary (and is) and funny (you make the call), leavening its stalk-and-slay setpieces with rural humor, most of it at the expense of Pierce himself, in the supporting role of maladroit Texarkana lawman “Sparkplug.” (Trivia: That was Pierce’s actual nickname.) Honoring a longstanding tradition of infusing horror stories with tension-relieving humor (an approach to one side of out-and-out horror comedies), THE TOWN THAT DREADED SUNDOWN keeps company with such films as DOCTOR X (1932), MURDERS IN THE ZOO (1933), THE DEVIL BAT (1940), THE LAST HOUSE ON THE LEFT (1972), and AN AMERICAN WEREWOLF IN LONDON (1981), which remain beloved to many of us despite or because of their at times groan-inducing longeuers. Having seen the film multiple times, I have developed a deaf ear and vulture eye towards the comedy and can watch it anew and appreciate again the stuff I feel it gets absolutely right… namely hitting, however true in its broad strokes, the urban myth vibe of “The Hook” and other Lovers Lane horror stories that just might owe their existence to the Phantom Killer.
Like SILENT NIGHT, BLOODY NIGHT (1972), BLACK CHRISTMAS (1974) and RITUALS (1978), THE TOWN THAT DREADED SUNDOWN is what they call a “proto-slasher,” anticipating by two years John Carpenter’s subgenre-defining HALLOWEEN (1978) and Sean S. Cunningham’s FRIDAY THE 13TH (1980) and all the copycat cash-ins that followed. (In FRIDAY THE 13TH PART 2, the character of unsinkable UnSub Jason Voorhees debuted, wearing a TOWN THAT DREADED SUNDOWN-like flour sack head cover that he would subsequently trade one sequel down the pike for his trademark hockey mask.) The attack scenes work a nasty charm, even if they operate nowhere near the primal scream level of THE TEXAS CHAIN SAW MASSACRE. All I need of Hell is to see the Phantom Killer’s mask sucking in and out of his mouth as he carries out his ghastly crimes. However he may miss the mark as a comedian, Pierce has tremendous empathy for the victims and their agonies give THE TOWN THAT DREADED SUNDOWN a gravity and a sense of true tragedy that would be conspicuously absent in horror entertainment just a few years later.
Whatever the residents of Texarkana, the survivors of the Phantom Killer, and the loved ones of the deceased, may have thought of THE TOWN THAT DREADED SUNDOWN, the film stuck, becoming a cult favorite worldwide and an annual tradition in Texarkana. A sequel of the same name was released in 2014, the less said about which the better. (Except this: the film’s reveal comes straight out of the Kevin Williamson playbook and, though the deaths of the victims in the original film continue to haunt me nearly 40 years after the fact, I’m hard pressed to remember the deaths of the victims in the remake, apart from the guy who gets shot in the eye while receiving oral sex… yeah, it’s a head shot. [Slow clap.]) I understand that the hick comedy relief in THE TOWN THAT DREADED SUNDOWN is a deal-breaker for many but for anyone enmeshed in the horror game it’s always an equation of percentages. Few fright films satisfy end-to-end and we ghouls accept that we often have to take our satisfaction piecemeal: the set design in this movie, the music from that one, this performance, that one sequence… and the same calculus applies here; the two-thirds of greatness that this film offers me trumps the entirety of what most others have to offer. Crafted to give you something to worry about on your drive from the cinema or ozoner (or while returning from a first date), THE TOWN THAT DREADED SUNDOWN is perhaps the ultimate cinematic way-homer, designed to have you scanning the shadows on all sides for a fiend who may very well still be at large.
THE TOWN THAT DREADED SUNDOWN is well-matched on Saturday night with Richard Brooks’ IN COLD BLOOD (1967). Based on the 1966 bestseller by Truman Capote and focused on the misdeeds of the criminals who perpetuated the 1959 murders of the Clutter family of Holcomb, Kansas, IN COLD BLOOD terrifies in precisely the opposite way… the killers are known to us, by name and personality, and we keep company with them right up until the fateful night they decided to rob a purportedly affluent wheat farmer and everything goes to Hell. If you flash back to this movie every time you fire up a flashlight in a darkened house, if you get back up out of bed to double and triple check the locks before drifting off to sleep, if you start at every creak at zero dark thirty, then the film has done more than its job.