In
1976, director Charles B. Pierce brought us The Town that Dreaded
Sundown, a quasi-true crime film in the spirit of The Texas
Chainsaw Massacre. The film reimagined, sometimes quite
liberally, the so-called "Phantom Killings" that racked the
twin border-towns of Texarkana, Texas and Texarkana, Arkansas in the
early 1940s. Pierce took details of the events—for instance, the
hood that "The Phantom" allegedly wore—and created from
them an exploitation proto-slasher that somehow managed a PG-13
rating. The film has its moments, but it is only as good as you would
imagine a PG-13 slasher could be. Moreover, historically-minded types
have panned the film for its factual inaccuracies (see, for instance,
James Presley's meticulously researched 2016 book The Phantom
Killer). Regardless, the film maintains a cult following, and is
still publicly screened in Texarkana at certain junctures, including
Halloween.
In
2014, Alfonso Gomez-Rejon directed a film also bearing the title The
Town that Dreaded Sundown. Gomez-Rejon is perhaps best known for directing episodes of American
Horror Story, and, true
to 1) that series, 2) the era, and 3) the nature of horror remakes in
general, his take on the Texarkana tragedy is unapologetically meta.
The 2014 Sundown
is not exactly a remake, however, nor can it properly be called a
sequel, even though it has aspects of each. The film takes place more-or-less within
our continuity, that is, real-world 2013, where the Phantom murders
took place in the 1940s and the 1976 version of The
Town that Dreaded Sundown
is just a movie. In fact, the opening scene takes place at a
Halloween public screening of Sundown
'76 in Texarkana.
Furthermore, it becomes clear early on that the antagonizing force in
the 2014 film is intent on re-creating the murders depicted in the
1976 film. As could be expected, the 2014 film is full of set-pieces in
which the director, writer, and producers show the audience how well
they know the original movie, the history of the events, and the
conventions of the genre and the medium as a whole. How meta did they
go? Suffice it to say that Charles B. Pierce's son is a character in
the movie. So
heavy is the meta-commentary that, in the scene where the sheriff
character played by Gary Cole is receiving fellatio from a haggard
Texarkana bar-star, you half-expect him to utter a "yeaaaaaaah"
and then start talking about TPS reports.
But the repeated all-knowing
nods are, on the whole, only mildly annoying, and no more obtrusive
than in any other post-2000 horror remake. In fact, the 2014 Sundown
handles the meta elements more deftly than most other horror films of its ilk,
where the writers lean heavily on in-jokes to address an obvious
paucity in original content (see, for instance, Tucker & Dale vs. Evil). Sundown
2014's meta approach comes to a head at the climax, which —and I
offer the mildest of spoiler
alerts here—quite
cleverly plays on the split identity of Texarkana itself (as a border-town). On the
whole, the film is well-realized, and Texarkana proves to be as
convincing a hellscape as Arkham or Derry or Amityville. I have no problem recommending 2014's The
Town that Dreaded Sundown,
though the 1976 version is a necessary prerequisite for viewing.
Even
though I'll advocate for the past and current versions of the
film, I nonetheless have trepidations about the future.
Meta-storytelling is not just a fad in mainstream horror; rather, it
has become a crutch. Given that this brand of genre auto-commentary
has been going strong since 1996's Scream, it raises the
question: what will The Town
that Dreaded Sundown
(2052) look like? Will it be a meta-meta-commentary on the subject
matter? Will it be the story of a killer recreating the 2013 film's
re-creation of the 1976 film (itself a re-creation of the narrative surrounding the ur-murders)? Perhaps the real question is when will the meta-commentary
stop in contemporary horror? When will writers and producers start
generating new ideas? When will the idea that there's nothing new
under the sun see its much-needed sundown? For now, this reviewer is
left feeling like a lot of the residents of Texarkana, fearing the
return of the Phantom. He might come back sooner rather than later.
In this sense, it's The
Town that Dreaded Sundown
(2024) that I find truly dreadful.
