As I've fairly recently come into possession of an excellent quality DVD-R featuring a nice widescreen print of this unavailable gem, culled from US TV, I decided it was due a revisit. I'm pleased to say that even on repeat viewing's The Town That Dreaded Sundown holds up as a great, creepy precursor to the slasher movie boom of the early eighties, with director Charles B. Pierce using the same unique pseudo-documentary feel he employed in his earlier The Legend Of Boggy Creek (another favourite of mine) to bring a creepy verisimilitude to his dramatisation of the true story of The Phantom Killer, a hooded killer who murdered a total of five people (and attacked three more) in the Texarkana region during the Spring of 1946, but was never identified or apprehended. Reliable hands Ben Johnson and Andrew Prine also give typically solid performances as the officers at the forefront of the police attempt to catch the killer, the former as the flamboyant yet much feared Texas Ranger bought in to lead the manhunt, and the latter as the brave young Deputy who barely misses out on shooting the killer.
It may get mentioned a fair bit on horror related forums, but The Town That Dreaded Sundown is certainly a film which horror fans should track down and watch any way they can. An underrated gem!
Anyone else's thought's/opinion's on this film would be more than welcome...
Will this film ever get a legitimate DVD release?
I also have a DVD-R here of Charles B. Pierce's later horror effort The Evictors, starring Jessica Harper and Vic Morrow. I think that is due a watch sometime soon...
The Phantom Killer (Background Info)
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