VideoXploiter Not much horror in this would-be slasher, just some hoe-hum kills without any gore to really speak of. It's more of a murder mystery, and pretty dull one. The 'hero' of the story is a Texas Ranger, who looks like he's a few days away from retirement. Outside of him, none of the characters were all that memorable. The only thing remotely interesting is the time period, which is the 1940s...for whatever reason. I'd pass on this one.

hellholehorror This didn't really do anything for me. I could see how people would be scared by the film but I think that it was just lacking something. It was made before graphic violence was popular in the eighties in death scenes and the suspense was unimpressive. Basically don't really bother. It was a good film but many better films have come since.

calvinnme I'd never even heard of this case until seeing this film, and from viewing the Wikipedia article they pretty much got the facts straight, down to the name of the legendary Texas Ranger who came in to head the investigation after the local Texarkana police realized they had a serial killer with no motive on their hands.I like how the film in the beginning takes the time to set up the atmosphere in Texarkana - heck, all across America - immediately postwar. There were plenty of jobs, people were optimistic, there was great growth in the need for houses and a marriage boom following the men coming back from overseas, yet Texarkana retained its small town charm.The killer escalates in violence and bravado with each attack until he is almost caught, and then disappears as suddenly as he appeared. When the killer is attacking, you just see a homemade mask made from a sack over his head, and he never speaks, but his heavy breathing is scarier than anything he could say. When the film is insinuating that the killer is around town, hiding in plain sight, just a pair of shoes are shown. He carried a blunt instrument because he seemed to enjoy the act of bludgeoning and causing pain, but he also carried a gun in case he had to kill quickly.Ben Johnson does a great job of portraying legendary Texas Ranger J.D. Morales, but I imagine law enforcement even in a big city would be hard pressed to solve what at that time was such an uncommon crime - a man who killed complete strangers just for the joy of inflicting pain. There were no FBI profilers, no DNA, criminal forensics was in its infancy. Thus nobody knows if the killer died, went to prison, or just "stopped".The one thing I DID notice - and that is completely forgivable given the film's B pedigree - is that the women's hairstyles were often very 70s for this to be 1946. Part documentary, part suspense film, I'd recommend this one.

Mr_Ectoplasma "The Town That Dreaded Sundown" focuses on the small community of Texarkana, Texas, which was plagued by a series of gruesome murders in the 1940s that are to this day unsolved. Charles B. Pierce's cult classic is an interesting and everlasting piece of cinematic history for two reasons: firstly, it is based on a real life series of crimes; and secondly, the film itself presents the events in a clinical, detached, straightforward manner in the semblance of a true-crime documentary, yet without actually being a true-crime documentary. This unusual narrative approach really sets "The Town That Dreaded Sundown" apart from its peers, and its release in 1976 marks it as one of the prototypes for the slasher film as it's come to be known.The criminal investigation aspect is heavy-handed in the film, which is another unique nuance, as the film manages to balance the investigative side of the story with the outright horror of the crimes committed. On an aesthetic level, the film feels as though it were made in the late 1950s-early 1960s, partly because it's a period piece, but also partly just because of its visual elements, which recall the grit of that era's B-movies. It is stark and colorful, and at times reminded me of a more serious Herschell Gordon Lewis picture, especially with the hackneyed comedy elements that bubble to the surface at times.Overall, it is not hard to see why "The Town That Dreaded Sundown" entered the lexicon of horror, because it is truly a unique piece of film history, bolstered by the meta-fact that it was a film based on history. The clinical documentarian approach is chilling in all the right ways, and the film is engaging in spite of some dragging of its feet. Not a flawless film, but certainly one to be remembered. 7/10.