For a film with some of the worst picture quality ever, it’s actually pretty damn fun.
And for a slasher film that’s wedged in between The Texas Chainsaw Massacre and Halloween on the timeline, The Town That Dreaded Sundown is rarely mentioned among slasher titles, despite having the now cliché masked villain that murders young lovers in ever more creative ways. While I wouldn’t say it even comes close to being as good as those two classics, it’s still worthy of mention
The Town That Dreaded Sundown is unique in that it’s based on real life murders in the town of Texarkana, situated on the border of Texas and Arkansas, and the film is presented in semi-documentary style, with a narrator presenting scenes and discussing the horrors. (For a more modern example of this, think of how Rob Zombie’s The Devil’s Rejects started.) The narration lends the film a certain credibility and authenticity, and in between the narration is when the action takes place.
An aspect of the movie that I found both fun and awkward, was how moments of tension were frequently broken up by goofy scenes involving the police officers. These moments of comic relief seem like something out of The Andy Griffith Show, and they go on waaaaay too long. But, somehow, this actually makes the scenes funnier, rather than cringe-inducing.
The major fault of The Town That Dreaded Sundown is the cinematography. The lighting and picture quality is horrible, especially at night, which–see the title–is when all the killing takes place. If the room you’re watching the movie in has even a glimmer of light squeezing between the blinds or beneath the door, then you’re going to have trouble following the night time action sequences. With a little improvement in this area, and with a little more gore, this too could have been a slasher classic. It’s still not too bad.
Check it out for yourself on YouTube.