You can measure a town by the stories it tells itself to sleep at night. Texarkana, that misty borderland where Texas and Arkansas shake hands like two drunk uncles at a family reunion, chose to turn trauma into entertainment. And bless Charles B. Pierce for answering that call—armed with a 16mm camera, a bag of duct tape, and what I can only assume was a case of Lone Star beer. The Town That Dreaded Sundown is a film that wants to be a documentary, a horror movie, a crime procedural, and a trombone PSA all at once. It doesn’t quite succeed at any of them, but damn if it doesn’t die trying—bloodily, theatrically, and with all the subtlety of a possum in a blender.
Origins: Boggy Creek and Other Backwoods Legends
Before Sundown, Pierce gave us The Legend of Boggy Creek, a docudrama about a hairy man in the swamp that terrified a generation and probably inspired more than a few restraining orders against local cryptids. Riding the high of that success (and, rumor has it, the fumes of whatever they were huffing in 1970s Shreveport), Pierce decided to dramatize the real-life 1946 Texarkana Moonlight Murders—a series of killings so gruesome they inspired a town-wide blackout and a 70-year conspiracy theory.
The film claims to be “true,” then changes every name and detail like a witness in the Federal Protection Program. It says the killer struck in Arkansas when most of the crimes were in Texas. It tells you the victims were chewed on like rawhide and tied to trees, which makes it sound like Hannibal Lecter was moonlighting in the woods. And then it has the gall to open with a narrator telling us solemnly, “This actually happened.” Sure it did, buddy. And Elvis is still alive, working in a Dairy Queen in Texarkana.
Casting, Plot, and Other Crimes
Ben Johnson—yes, that Ben Johnson, the Oscar-winner from The Last Picture Show—wanders through the movie looking like he took the role under court order. He plays “Captain J.D. Morales,” based on Texas Ranger M.T. “Lone Wolf” Gonzaullas, a man whose nickname sounds like a bourbon label. His sidekick, Norman Ramsey (Andrew Prine), spends the movie furrowing his brow, writing the ending of the film on the fly, and dodging snakes—one of which was a real moccasin on set. No symbolism there.
garde butcher. One victim is murdered by a trombone—a sequence so gleefully deranged that it bypasses bad taste and laps itself into surrealist art. Elsewhere, you get long stretches of folks talking in diners, loitering in barbershops, and driving through soggy fields in what might be the slowest police pursuit this side of a funeral procession.
Production was more local than a church bake sale. Extras show up multiple times in different “roles,” either due to budget constraints or Pierce’s belief that the town was small enough no one would notice. You’ll spot the same guy crossing the street, serving coffee, reinforcing windows, and later handing out punch at the prom. He’s basically Texarkana’s Forrest Gump.
Blood, Lawsuits, and the Trombone Heard ’Round the World
Critics in 1976 panned the film like it owed them money. The New York Times called it unprofessional. Variety said it was all shock and no substance. Gene Siskel gave it half a star and probably set his chair on fire afterward. But amid the carnage, some praised Pierce’s unflinching murder scenes—especially local reviewers, who gave polite golf claps while squirming through the trombone sequence like it was a Baptist sermon on venereal disease.
And then came the lawsuits. The family of one of the real victims sued for $1.3 million over the film’s portrayal of their sister as a loose, dropout floozy—which, given the facts, was like rewriting Anne Frank as a blackjack dealer. The case was dismissed. Texarkana itself tried to get the movie’s tagline—“This man still lurks the streets”—removed. Pierce agreed… then left it on the posters anyway. That, friends, is what we call marketing with malice.
The Killer Who Wouldn’t Die
Somehow, The Town That Dreaded Sundown survived obscurity. It went out of print, lived on bootlegs, and finally resurfaced in 2013 on Blu-ray thanks to Shout! Factory, who deserve hazard pay. Now it’s a cult classic, shown every October in the very town it terrorized. Talk about closure through Stockholm Syndrome.
Oh, and that creepy final shot? The Phantom standing in line at a movie theater to watch The Town That Dreaded Sundown? That’s either high-concept meta or a sign the editor gave up and pasted in a fever dream. Either way, it’s the kind of moment that gets you invited to speak at horror conventions… or restraining orders.
Curtain Call
Three stars for the guts (literal and figurative), the ambition, and the unforgettable insanity of that trombone kill. It’s messy, exploitative, strangely regional, and mostly fiction—but it crawled out of the drive-in graveyard and found immortality in cheap polyester and myth. Just don’t ask it to solve the crime.
⭐️⭐️⭐️ (3/5)
#BloodInTheBayou #SackMaskKiller #TromboneDeath #TexarkanaTrashfire #CultCinemaGold #DriveInDreams
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