Charles B. Pierce made a B Movie hit with The Legend of Boggy Creek (1972), a docudrama about a Sasquatch stalking the Arkansas swamp. The Town That Dreaded Sundown (1976) applies the same techniques to a true crime story, a chiller several notches above your standard drive-in fare.
A masked killer called the Phantom stalks Texarkana, Texas in spring and summer of 1946. He targets exclusively couples, both at lovers' lanes and in their homes, leaving some dead and others traumatized. Captain J.B. Morales (Ben Johnson) of the Texas Rangers coordinates the investigation, but the Phantom manages to strike every 21 days, baffling his pursuers and terrorizing the townsfolk.
Part slasher movie, part police procedural, The Town That Dreaded Sundown presages later slashers in its lurid approach. The Phantom is an inscrutable psycho with a versatility Jason Voorhees would envy; he attacks with pistols, tire irons, pickaxes and a trombone. The most terrifying scene has him terrorize a high school couple, methodically toying with them as they try to escape. Pierce plays the scene with surefire creepiness, zoning out music for victims' cries, chirping crickets and the killer's labored breathing.
Pierce avoids tastelessness with relative restraint; the killings are graphic but the movie's grounded enough in small-town life to seem realistic. Pierce and writer Earl E. Smith provide sensitive vignettes of postwar Texas, with soldiers returning home, weddings and proms, along with Jim Roberson's scenic photography that provide jarring contrast with the brutal slayings. The most Texan scene shows terrified townsfolk buying out a gun store. Sundown's most egregious faults are a stentorian narration and groaning comic relief, mostly provided by Pierce himself as a bumbling deputy.
The Town That Dreaded Sundown resembles David Fincher's Zodiac as much as Halloween, showing police hunting an elusive murderer. Morales is an ace investigator baffled by a psychopath with no motive, who gets off on outwitting cops more than killing. Morales and the Texarkana police deal with intrusive townspeople, hysterical reporters and false confessions from attention-seekers. The killer's smarts combine with bad luck, as when a rainstorm prevents Deputy Ramsey (Andrew Prine) from foiling a murder.
Ben Johnson recycles his Melvin Purvis role from Dillinger, a flamboyant, cigar-smoking lawman bemused by his query. Andrew Prine makes a decent foil, a good cop completely out of his depth. Dawn Wells is a featured victim, surviving a home invasion and crawling through a cornfield to evade her assailant. Several cast members are Texarkana locals, convincingly authentic; actors Jimmy Clem (as a policeman) and Cindy Butler (as a victim) appeared in other Pierce films, notably Boggy Creek II: And the Legend Continues.
The Town That Dreaded Sundown ends with an action scene that provides catharsis, if not closure. The real Phantom never struck again but was never caught, leaving a half-dozen victims and an insolvable mystery in its wake. Credit Charles B. Pierce and his collaborators for making this enigmatic case into a compelling film.