The Town That Dreaded Sundown (1976)

Interesting facts

• Box office: $5M
• Budget: $400K
• Earned 12.5× its budget

The Town That Dreaded Sundown is a 1976 American slasher filmdirected and co-produced by Charles B. Pierce and written by Earl E. Smith. The film stars Ben Johnson, Andrew Prine, and Dawn Wells. It is loosely based on the 1946 Texarkana Moonlight Murders, crimes attributed to an unidentified serial killer known as the Phantom Killer.

Production

Principal photography began on Monday, June 21, in the very hot summer of 1976 for about four weeks. Locations included Scott, Arkansas, Shreveport, Louisiana, Garland City, Arkansas, and Texarkana, Texas. The last scene filmed was the first attack, which was shot in front of Pierce's home in Shreveport. About 19 Texarkana locals starred in the film along with several extras.

Pierce called Dawn Wells on July 8, 1976, to star in his film. She arrived by plane in Texarkana before noon the next day. She stayed in Texarkana for six days, but completed her scenes in the first two. While filming the cornfield scene, Wells was almost attacked by a bulldog, but the crew scared it away by shooting at it. Wells wanted to talk to the real-life survivor of her role, Katie Starks, but Katie refused.

Andrew Prine, who played Norman Ramsey, wrote the last fifth of the film because it had no ending. Both Ben Johnson and he were hung over while filming the train scene after partying the night before. During the rain scene with Ramsey, a snake made its way on the set. Crew members were yelling at Andrew that it was a moccasin, but Prine wanted to finish his scene without reshooting, so the crew killed the snake afterwards.

Read on Wikipedia · Text from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. Data from Wikidata.