175 - The Town That Dreaded Sundown

    In 1946 Arkansas, a serial killer kills a handful of victims.  The police investigate, and the town gets nervous.
    I’ve seen reference to this movie in several books I have about horror movies, but I’ve always had a hard time locating a copy of it.  I’ve never seen a VHS copy.  It was recently released on Blu-ray, and a very good transfer has shown up on Netflix.
    It’s a weird movie, because it wants to be a horror movie, but it takes a lot of detours.  There’s a certain amount of time spent on police investigation, and there a lot of comedy.  It’s not very good comedy, it’s only mildly amusing.  There’s usually a balance between horror and comedy, and the sense of humor is carefully monitored so that it doesn’t feel like it takes away from the horror.  This movie doesn’t consider that.
    The result is that this movie has some very good, and very interesting material, but it also shoots itself in the foot.
    The notably good stuff first.
    The sense of atmosphere is really good.  Everything seems accurately period-specific.  There’s a lot of footage of people around town, and this builds the neighborhood very well.  There’s a sequence where the killer is stalking/attacking a young couple that have parked in the darkness for awhile.  I was really pleased with how most of this sequence was shot.  Lengthy shots, small actions aren’t removed.  It feels like this section is done in real-time, and that helps make a sense of dread work.
    This leads me to the bad things.  That same sequence ends with the weirdest, least-explicit murder.  The killer somehow kills the girl with her trombone, by jabbing it into her back.  For reasons I won’t get into here… that doesn’t seem like it would work.  In addition to this bit, there are some broader problems.  The acting is amateurish for the most part.  The comedic elements don’t have a payoff, and they take some of the gravity away from the situation.
    Part of what made this movie effective for some viewers was the lack of an ending.  The killer gets away… the killings stop.  And they never found out who was behind them.
    One of the comedic bits seemed like it might be an effort to reference The Dukes of Hazzard… except that show started airing three years later!