The Town That Dreaded Sundown

If you grew up in the era of movie rentals and perused the horror section, this cover is as iconic as Friday The 13’s chalk body outline or Halloween’s pumpkin morphing into a hand holding a knife. The hooded head looming over a small town is chilling; the tagline about killing people in 1946 and still being at large only makes it scarier. It’s a shame, then, that the movie can’t fulfill the promise of the poster. The three major scenes of stalking/murder are well done, for sure. Aside from the legendary trombone murder, it’s all very realistic, in the sense that the killer isn’t superhuman, and the murders aren’t quick one-shots. The physicality feels real. The victims feel terrified. The deaths feel agonizing. It sounds sick to say, but the murders are the best part of the movie, because they have an authenticity to them. It’s the rest of the movie that is lacking. It feels like an extended episode of reality TV crime show, like Unsolved Mysteries or America’s Most Wanted, but southern-fried; a laughably OTT narrator fills in gaps in the actual narrative, while the actors ham it up like re-enactments from those shows. Unnecessarily long scenes abound of things you don’t need to see, like 2-3 minutes of kids you’ve never been introduced to dancing at the prom, or the over-long prologue to set that 40’s Americana feeling that just won’t stop. Lighting, direction, the score, all of it is hokey and goofy and completely off-balance when set against the murder scenes. The police procedural stuff — which is the bulk of the movie — is dull, filled with long conversations about motives, when the killer might strike next, but nothing of actual interest. It’s as dry a wicker basket. And then there’s the comic relief, which lands like a dead fish. It’s all very hyuck-hyuck redneck humor — a man wearing a dress! A bumbling cop who can’t find his keys or drive in a straight line! It’s all very corny, lacking anything of actual humor in it, and contributes to this movie’s glaring identity crisis. Does it want to be a police procedural? An homage to pulpy 40’s style filmmaking, ran through a southern filter? A comedy? A proto-slasher? The only thing for sure is it isn’t an authentic representation of the real Texarkana Moonlight Murders. That, and it’s just a big ol’ pile of meh. Hooptober 2022 movie #14/31