• Produced and directed by Charles B. Pierce
• Written by Earl E. Smith
• Starring
  • Ben Johnson
  • Andrew Prine
  • Dawn Wells
  • Jimmy Clem
• Executive produced by Samuel Z. Arkoff

I suppose this film is more important in a historical sense than an artistic one: it’s a proto-slasher film (from 1976, before the great age of the slasher flick), about a proto-slasher (a real whacko carving up Texarkana in 1946).

Just to establish this as being a docu-drama, and therefore obviously non-exploitative, let’s have a long narration fill in the settings for us, instead of any interesting technique: It’s eight months after the war, and Texarkana is returning to normal and full of that heady optimism which will turn to conformist paranoia by the mid-’50s. We get to see a long montage of jes’ plain life with jes’ plain folks. (In case you were wondering, ’40s and ’70s makeup and hairstyles don’t blend very well — imagine an episode of The Waltons with a masked killer.)

The first attack: SUNDAY, MARCH 3 (superimposed, so we won’t forget the date). We can’t get mad at the cliches because it’s all true: the couple parking on lover’s lane, the frigid girl who hears something outside…. Then a psycho with a flourbag over his head shows up.

Next morning. Oddly enough, they’re still alive; both have been badly beaten, and the girl was bitten savagely all over her back, belly and breasts. We’re introduced to a station full of cops, including Deputy Ramsey.

Fast forward to the next superimposed date: SATURDAY, MARCH 24. The narrator is still around to give this all an air of legitimacy; unfortunately, he insists on telling us things that are either irrelevant or ultimately redundant, since the characters promptly tell us the same thing. Deputy Ramsey patrols the lover’s lanes, hears shots in the woods, and comes upon the corpses of two young lovers — and almost catches the Phantom as he get away in the lovers’ car.

The narration tells us all about the effects of “the second attack by the killer” (technically, this is only the first attack by the killer — the first time, he didn’t kill anyone, so he wasn’t a killer yet): Everyone buys a gun, everyone puts heavy-duty locks on their doors. This despite the fact that both attacks have been young couples on secluded roads; this pattern seems to elude the good people of Texarkana.

Between now and the next killing, two things happen. One, we call in Captain J.D. Morales, legendary investigator of the Texas Rangers. Two, we spend far too much time in comic relief with a patrolman named Sparkplug. It’s an unforgivable blooper in budgeting screen time: We get to see Sparkplug’s terrible driving as he chauffers Morales, but the actual investigation is summarized by the narrator.

Deputy Ramsey hits on the pattern: he strikes every three weeks! So, by all means, let’s make sure that SUNDAY, APRIL 14TH is scheduled for the junior/senior prom. After all, just because their parents are locking their doors and loaded for bear doesn’t mean that the kids are smart enough not to park. Sure enough, a trombonist and her date go and park (and apparently take a nap — is that what parking’s all about) and get attacked by the Phantom. There’s a long chase scene, and finally he dispatches them (using her trombone as a bayonet, no less).

By this time, everything is complicated by crazies confessing and claiming to be the Phantom. (Insert a car chase with one of the pretenders here, where both cars manage to squeal their tires while driving over a lawn.) The police have called in a psychologist, who does nothing for morale (or Morales): he guesses that the killer will never be caught.

For the next attack (FRIDAY, MAY 3RD, in case you were curious), the killer breaks pattern: he attacks a young beautiful wife (yes, that is Mary Ann from Gilligan’s Island — she thought she’d be safe once she got off that damned island…). Her husband bites the dust, but she manages to drag her hideously wounded self through the corn patch to the nearest neighbor’s house.

Another three weeks go buy, and this time — he doesn’t strike! Ramsey and Morales are climbing the walls with anticipation. But there’s nothing for several weeks. In fact, it isn’t until fall that someone finds the car stolen by the Phantom on the second attack. Morales and Ramsey explore the nearby sandpit — and there’s the Phantom, enjoying his solitude! (He even wears his flour sack when he’s not on the hunt; I guess it’s just comfortable.) They chase him and shoot him in the leg, but he manages to get away into the swamp. The bloodhounds lose his scent. And he’s never heard from again.

Is he dead? Is he in jail on another charge? Or is he — gasp — still living in Texarkana, waiting for that day when something tickles his brain and he starts killing again?

Like I said, the fact that this is a true story is used by the filmmakers to cover a bunch of flaws that would be unforgivable in a normal movie. The narration is by and large inept, telling us things that we’d love to see on screen while boring visuals are being shown to us. The inexplicable focus on Sparkplug only serves to distance us further from Ramsey and Morales, the closest thing we have to protagonists. Some of the attacks are done well (the last two, especially), but tension is immediately drained when the narrator comes back in to summarize the next few weeks of police activity.

It’s good material, though, and I think it’s about due for a remake.

Some Notable Totables:

• body count: 5
• breasts: 0
• explosions: 0
• dream sequences: 0
• ominous thunderstorms: 0
• actors who’ve appeared on Star Trek: 2
  • Andrew Prine (Deputy Ramsey) played “Legate Turrel” on a 3rd season DS9 and “Lt. Sura” on a 6th season TNG
  • Bud Davis (the Phantom Killer) was stunt co-ordinator on Star Trek: Generations