In 1976, director Charles B. Pierce ('The Legend of Boggy Creek' / 'The Winds of Autumn'), well before 'Halloween' or 'Friday the 13th, single-handedly invented the silent-killer-in-a-mask genre that has saturated horror ever since. What's more, he did it with style. There are chunks of this film that could easily have been directed by a young, idealistic Steven Spielberg with an every-man police officer as the lead and an almost-folksy narration elevating the town of Texarkana to sympathetic heights.
In the mid-1940's, the city of Texarkana (which straddles the Texas/Arkansas border) was the location of one of America's first serial killer cases. 'The Town That Dreaded Sundown' is a very loose interpretation of the (so dubbed) 'Phantom Killer's' exploits and the Police, Texas Ranger, and FBI investigations that followed him over the course of a year. The famous bag mask (that was later recycled for Jason Voorhees' first appearance in 'Friday the 13th Part 2') was a liberty taken by the director - a liberty taken with great success. Also a construct of creative freedom are the murder scenes in this film (which are violently terrifying and extremely graphic for any era). A good example of this skewing of truth is a death – and I won't go into detail – involving a rather creative attempt at playing the trombone. There was a saxophone in evidence with one of the real murders but the gruesome fiction that Pierce comes up with has to have scarred many young minds over the last 37 years (mine included).
With hindsight and oodles of carbon-copy slasher films stored away in our collective psyches, the plot comes across as being pretty basic for the genre but it's actually a very human film. There are genuine characters and a bizarre sense of humor that fluctuates between hideously dark and downright goofy. From scene to scene, the tone changes are so jarring that I wouldn't hesitate to believe that there were multiple directors involved. It feels a bit like a nightmare baby spawned by John Huston, John Carpenter, and 'The Dukes of Hazard'. How can you possibly not enjoy such a monstrous birth!?
In the mid-1940's, the city of Texarkana (which straddles the Texas/Arkansas border) was the location of one of America's first serial killer cases. 'The Town That Dreaded Sundown' is a very loose interpretation of the (so dubbed) 'Phantom Killer's' exploits and the Police, Texas Ranger, and FBI investigations that followed him over the course of a year. The famous bag mask (that was later recycled for Jason Voorhees' first appearance in 'Friday the 13th Part 2') was a liberty taken by the director - a liberty taken with great success. Also a construct of creative freedom are the murder scenes in this film (which are violently terrifying and extremely graphic for any era). A good example of this skewing of truth is a death – and I won't go into detail – involving a rather creative attempt at playing the trombone. There was a saxophone in evidence with one of the real murders but the gruesome fiction that Pierce comes up with has to have scarred many young minds over the last 37 years (mine included).
With hindsight and oodles of carbon-copy slasher films stored away in our collective psyches, the plot comes across as being pretty basic for the genre but it's actually a very human film. There are genuine characters and a bizarre sense of humor that fluctuates between hideously dark and downright goofy. From scene to scene, the tone changes are so jarring that I wouldn't hesitate to believe that there were multiple directors involved. It feels a bit like a nightmare baby spawned by John Huston, John Carpenter, and 'The Dukes of Hazard'. How can you possibly not enjoy such a monstrous birth!?