The Town That Dreaded Sundown

Some time back, TCM had a spotlight on movies about true crime. One of the movies they showed that I hadn't heard of before was one called The Town that Dreaded Sundown. Recently, I finally got around to watching it to do a post on here.

The movie opens up in February, 1946, in Texarkana, a town that straddles the Texas/Arkansas border. As you can guess from the date, World War II has just ended with the soldiers and sailors returning home, and a new wave of optimism and prosperity in town. A couple of young people decide that they're going to get away from town for the evening, one one of the "lovers' lanes" that towns apparently had back in the day. If you want to go necking or anything like that, being in such a secluded location isn't a bad thing. But if something goes wrong, you've got a problem.

And, as you can guess, something is about to go wrong. Some guy with a head covering that only has eyeholes cut out of it shows up, and attacks the young couple, leaving both of them alive, but badly injured. They're not able to give much in the way of identification, of course. And then, three weeks later, there's another such incident. But this time, gunshots are involved, and deputy Norman Ramsey (Andrew Prine) finds the two lovers quite dead. And when it's realized that this and the previous lovers' lane incident have a lot in common, it's feared that the town has a serial killer on its hands.

To deal with that, Texas sends in Texas Ranger J.D. Morales (Ben Johnson) to investigate. He takes over the investigation from the locals, and does some things that are very good, and some not so good. He doesn't tell the media everything that is going on with the investigation, tough patooties for the reporters. But at the same time, he seems like a bit of a dictator in running the case. His theory that the killer, now dubbed the Phantom, is going to strike every three weeks is part of the reason the townsfolk get so scared at night.

Eventually,there are a couple more sets of attacks, the last one even more audacious as the Phantom goes after two people in their own home rather than on a lovers' lane where he's a lot less likely to be seen. The husband is shot dead, but the wife, Helen Reed (Dawn Wells), is able to escape, and eventually recovers. Meanwhile, the police are still baffled.

The police finally get a break when there's a report of a stolen car that matches reports from some of the earlier attacks. This leads to a chase through a swamp, and the Phantom is never seen again. To this day, nobody really knows who the Phantom was, and whether he died in that swamp or elsewhere.

I didn't know anything about these killings before seeing the movie, so I don't know quite how close the movie follows the events of the case. Wikipedia, for what it's worth, suggests that it's a reasonably accurate (certainly by Hollywood standards) retelling of the story. Ben Johnson is really slumming here, having won the Oscar just a few years earlier for The Last Picture Show. Indeed, a lot of the other cast members come across as amateurish. However, I found that it actually helped the movie, as for me it gave the film a sense of cinema verite.

The Town That Dreaded Sundown is not a great movie by any standards, but it's one that should entertain you if you get a bunch of friends and a big bowl of popcorn.