Watch The Town That Dreaded Sundown For Free

Surprisingly incoherent and boring

If you don't like this, we can't be friends.

if their story seems completely bonkers, almost like a feverish work of fiction, you ain't heard nothing yet.

It’s fine. It's literally the definition of a fine movie. You’ve seen it before, you know every beat and outcome before the characters even do. Only question is how much escapism you’re looking for.

THE TOWN THAT DREADED SUNDOWN is an amazing movie. It's a horror film, a police procedural, and a documentary, all in one. In 1946, a hooded figure known only as "The Phantom", stalked the town of Texarcana, killing the unwary. The movie strays somewhat from the facts of the actual case, but not enough to make it unbelievable. The only scene that is truly "out there", and plays loose w/ the facts, is the notorious "trombone scene", where a woman is killed, using her own "re-purposed" trombone against her. In reality, it was a sax. Other than a few other, minor details, the story is solid enough. This is also a very good film for fans of Andrew Prine and / or Ben Johnson, each of whom put in excellent performances here. Of special note is Dawn Wells, who certainly proves there's more to her than "Mary Ann"! Her harrowing scene near the end is the best of the movie! It's also the most accurate. Frightening, informative, and entertaining, TTTDS remains a unique and influential film...

Shortly after World War II ended, the community of Texarkana, Arkansas were finally piecing their lives back together and preparing for a time of harmony and peace. That is, until a masked psychopath, dubbed the 'Phantom Killer' by the press, starts a killing spree that will shake the city to its very core. Writer and director Charles B. Pierce (who also has a supporting role as a bumbling deputy) flaunts his artistic license with the events that actually occurred in 1946, informing us that "only the names have been changed," when in fact the story is altered considerably to form a traditional thriller narrative, yet the result is an effective horror.The Town That Dreaded Sundown could be labelled as one of the first 'slasher' movies, having emerged two years before John Carpenter's Halloween, the film that really kicked-off the genre. Yet while there is slashing-a-plenty, the film also works just as well as a police procedural and a docudrama, with the majority of the attention focusing on the heavy toll the murders take on the city's terrified inhabitants, and the desperate actions of the police trying to catch him. Reliable deputy sheriff Norman Ramsey (Andrew Prine) is given the task of overlooking the investigation, and when the few leads they have lead to dead-ends, legendary Texas Ranger J.D. Morales (Ben Johnson) - based on real-life Ranger Manuel 'Lone Wolf' Gonzaullas - is drafted in to take charge.The highlights of The Town That Dreaded Sundown come in the form of some very effective murder set-pieces. There are no drawn- out stalking scenes of hapless victims running screaming through the woods or lashings of over-the-top gore. Instead, the killings are brutal and straight-to-the-point, with the sound of killers near- orgasmic breathing, which are muffled through the killer's gunny sack disguise, proving incredibly discomforting. What I didn't expect was the sudden tonal shifts to slapstick comedy. The inept deputy 'Sparkplug', played by Pierce, seems to have wandered in from a Marx Brothers set, with his frequently idiotic mishaps, such as accidentally driving Ramsey and Morales into a lake for them to emerge wet and grumpy, jarring the film's flow and carefully built atmosphere. These unwelcome comedy interludes are a constant and unnecessary distraction, and means that the film falls way short of the 70's horror classic it could have been.

This is one of the better horror thrillers to come out of the 70's. The killer wears a terrifying hooded mask and is Merciless. Loved every minute of it, the Texas ranger, spark plug, the killer EVERYTHING. I really like how the killer was never found, or possibly died in the swamp. It keeps that (it could be anybody) feel at the end. Maybe the killer is walking around right next to you... makes you think a bit. And it's a TRUE story, these events actually did occur. And the town shows the movie in the park where the killings took place. That is pretty cool. The town actually embraces the murders, and realizes this movie is a cult classic. The blu ray release looks stunning, very good transfer. I thought the film was shot in the 90's after watching it, it looked that crisp.

"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.