← Back to Reviews
in
THIS REVIEW CONTAINS SPOILERS THROUGHOUT.
The Town That Dreaded Sundown
Just a few months after World War II, something happened that shook the little town of Texarkana. Everything had gone back to normal and it generally was a very peaceful place to live at. But all of a sudden, a man in a mask appears and kills two teenagers at the dating spot Lover’s Lane. And just like that, a manhunt begins after one of the most brutal serial killers in history…
This low-budget ambitious horror film was based on a true story, where the only major change is said to be the names. There’s a narrator throughout who tells about the course of events, which gives it an extra sense of dread.
The acting is very good. Andrew Prine (known to horror fans as playing a priest in Amityville II: The Possession) does a solid job as the deadpan cop Norman Ramsey. Whenever he’s tracking down the perpetrator he’s convincingly courageous, yet quietly terrified at the same time. Charles B. Pierce (the director) appears in a role himself as the unstable traffic cop A.C. “Sparkplug” Benson, who gets dragged into the case. Generally this is a serious movie, but he provides some nice comedic moments as he shows off as a very hot temper and driving so incompetent he would need to learn how to drive more than SpongeBob needs boating school. One especially funny scene is when he goes undercover dressed up as a girl and the other cop (going undercover as well) starts flirting with him. Any scenes where the serious cop J.D Morales (portrayed impeccably by Ben Johnson) gets angry at Sparkplug for screwing up are ingenious as well.
Where the movie really excels however is the ominous night scenes where you see unsuspecting couples just hoping to spend some quality time with each other, only to get stalked by a sadistic masked killer. Hearing the heavy breathing from the mask and seeing the victims start to panic as they try to get away but he(?) only gets closer and closer makes you very scared for them. One particularly eerie sequence is when the victim Peggy gets tied to her tree while her boyfriend Roy Allen lies limp on the ground. As Roy regains consciousness he tries to escape, his face all bloody. But the killer won’t have none with it. You see him desperately trying to find an exit route, but you know it can only end badly. It then gets worse when the killer (the police calls him “the Phantom”, so let’s use that name from now on) returns to the girl tied to the tree. You see him pull up a trombone, and put a knife in it, attempting to stab her by making a sound with it. You see him make several attempts, hoping that maybe he will just give up and let her off the hook. But eventually, Peggy gets stabbed. It’s by far the saddest killing in the entire movie, as she had absolutely no chance of getting away. This is worse than any over-the-top death scenes from the Friday movies, since you know it’s real. You feel the terror crawling like a spider inside your skin.
The ending will come off to some people as extremely anticlimactic. And truth be told, anticlimactic endings are usually my biggest enemy. Even Zodiac as good as it is, I was left thinking “So that’s it, huh? We’re some kinda Zodiac hunting squad.”
Okay, that joke was terrible.
But in this case, it actually made it a bit spooky. Knowing that since nobody identified his face, he can just walk around the usual folks and no one will notice. We saw a few scenes earlier how the Phantom was there at a party. We only saw the shoes, but the fact still remains that the answer was there in front of their very eyes, hidden in plain sight.
Some of the victims did survive, such as Helen Reed (played by Dawn Wells, who gives the best performance next to Johnson), which I guess is the closest we get to a happy ending. But whatever happened to the Phantom, we may never find out.
The Town That Dreaded Sundown
Just a few months after World War II, something happened that shook the little town of Texarkana. Everything had gone back to normal and it generally was a very peaceful place to live at. But all of a sudden, a man in a mask appears and kills two teenagers at the dating spot Lover’s Lane. And just like that, a manhunt begins after one of the most brutal serial killers in history…
This low-budget ambitious horror film was based on a true story, where the only major change is said to be the names. There’s a narrator throughout who tells about the course of events, which gives it an extra sense of dread.
The acting is very good. Andrew Prine (known to horror fans as playing a priest in Amityville II: The Possession) does a solid job as the deadpan cop Norman Ramsey. Whenever he’s tracking down the perpetrator he’s convincingly courageous, yet quietly terrified at the same time. Charles B. Pierce (the director) appears in a role himself as the unstable traffic cop A.C. “Sparkplug” Benson, who gets dragged into the case. Generally this is a serious movie, but he provides some nice comedic moments as he shows off as a very hot temper and driving so incompetent he would need to learn how to drive more than SpongeBob needs boating school. One especially funny scene is when he goes undercover dressed up as a girl and the other cop (going undercover as well) starts flirting with him. Any scenes where the serious cop J.D Morales (portrayed impeccably by Ben Johnson) gets angry at Sparkplug for screwing up are ingenious as well.
Where the movie really excels however is the ominous night scenes where you see unsuspecting couples just hoping to spend some quality time with each other, only to get stalked by a sadistic masked killer. Hearing the heavy breathing from the mask and seeing the victims start to panic as they try to get away but he(?) only gets closer and closer makes you very scared for them. One particularly eerie sequence is when the victim Peggy gets tied to her tree while her boyfriend Roy Allen lies limp on the ground. As Roy regains consciousness he tries to escape, his face all bloody. But the killer won’t have none with it. You see him desperately trying to find an exit route, but you know it can only end badly. It then gets worse when the killer (the police calls him “the Phantom”, so let’s use that name from now on) returns to the girl tied to the tree. You see him pull up a trombone, and put a knife in it, attempting to stab her by making a sound with it. You see him make several attempts, hoping that maybe he will just give up and let her off the hook. But eventually, Peggy gets stabbed. It’s by far the saddest killing in the entire movie, as she had absolutely no chance of getting away. This is worse than any over-the-top death scenes from the Friday movies, since you know it’s real. You feel the terror crawling like a spider inside your skin.
The ending will come off to some people as extremely anticlimactic. And truth be told, anticlimactic endings are usually my biggest enemy. Even Zodiac as good as it is, I was left thinking “So that’s it, huh? We’re some kinda Zodiac hunting squad.”
Okay, that joke was terrible.
But in this case, it actually made it a bit spooky. Knowing that since nobody identified his face, he can just walk around the usual folks and no one will notice. We saw a few scenes earlier how the Phantom was there at a party. We only saw the shoes, but the fact still remains that the answer was there in front of their very eyes, hidden in plain sight.
Some of the victims did survive, such as Helen Reed (played by Dawn Wells, who gives the best performance next to Johnson), which I guess is the closest we get to a happy ending. But whatever happened to the Phantom, we may never find out.