Alfonso Gomez-Rejon directing the movie Me, Earl and the Dying Girl probably wouldn’t make you think that he could knock it out of the park when it comes to horror. Seeing that this was produced by Jason Blum and Ryan Murphy (Gomez-Rejon also worked with the latter on the excoriable American Horror Story) isn’t something that would give you any hope, either. But man — this is way better than I would have ever thought and is actually a movie I’ve recommended to many people.

October 31, 2013. Texarkana. The local drive-in is showing its annual event of the original The Town That Dreaded Sundown, which the film at once presents as an actual film in its universe but also one based on the true story of the Phantom Killer of 1946. Corey Holland and Jami Lerner do the typical slasher move of leaving the drive-in to make out before the Phantom attacks them, saying, “This is for Mary. Make them remember.”

With that, we’re let loose in the modern world, where people have started to forget the Phantom but are about to get a devastating reminder of his power. There’s a bravura sequence where a soldier comes back home from leave and instantly finds himself in a hotel with his girlfriend before leaving to get a drink. He’s beheaded and the Phantom brutally kills her before calling Jami with Corey’s phone, saying, “I’m going to do it again and again until you make them remember.”

Just like in 1946, people start locking their doors and demanding that the police do something. Much like an Americanized giallo, Jami responds by starting her own investigation with a former classmate named Nick. And then “Lone Wolf” Morales (Anthony Anderson) takes over the case from the locals, like Chief Deputy Tillman (Gary Cole, always a welcome face).

Jami keeps getting emails from the killer, yet the police don’t believe her. They already have the killer — a depressed teen who has dressed up as the Phantom to die via suicide by cop. But the murderer isn’t really dead, as the remake/reimagining redoes the first film’s infamous trombone murder one better by having the Phantom wipe out a young male couple.

The cops decide to look closer at the email and determine that it came from Reverend Cartwright (Edward Herrmann in his last role) but don’t believe he is the killer. Jami hasn’t stopped looking and learns that Charles B. Pierce’s (the creator of the original as well as The Legend of Boggy Creek) son still lives in the area. He believes that this Phantom is the grandson of Hank McCreedy, the forgotten sixth victim of the original Phantom, who had a wife named Mary.

Meanwhile, the Phantom moves on to even killing cops, wiping out Tillman while he’s instigating a sword fight with a lady he’s brought home from the bar. While all this is going on, Jami decides to leave town to go to college and loses her virginity to Nick, who is quickly killed by the Phantom.

As she tries to leave town with her grandmother, the Phantom attacks them at a gas station, killing nearly everyone with a rifle. Jami finds Nick’s body just as she’s pinned to a wall by arrows and learns that there are two killers — Deputy Foster, who is McReady’s grandson and her boyfriend Corey, who had faked his death.  Corey tries to tell her that Texarkana had a box made for them and they are the same, but she rejects him. Foster then shoots Cory so that he has a patsy to blame, but Jami shoots him and escapes. His body is never found.

In the end, Jami is off at college, far away from small town life. Yet even there, the shadow of the Phantom is still there.

This movie is never going to replace the original, obviously. It has none of the abrupt shifts in narrative tone, instead staying firmly in dark territory. But unlike so many modern remakes, it both honors and adds to the movie that it came from.

You can watch this movie on Amazon Prime.

Keep in mind that this article has only run in one place, in a special issue of Drive-In Asylum that was a super limited edition giveaway at a weekend Mahoning Drive-In event. You can’t get it any longer, but you can grab every other issues at their online store! I don’t usually share the artwork that I do for every issue, but seeing as how you can’t buy this one, you get to see it.

I’m incredibly jealous of you right now.

You’re probably sitting in your car, reading through this issue of Drive-In Asylum and getting ready for the show to begin. And there’s a good chance that you may have never seen The Town That Dreaded Sundown before. You’re about to have an experience that you’ll only have once in your life. For this is a film that defies logic and even, at times, narrative sense. But for all its flaws, this movie packs a savage punch. You may be thinking that a film made in 1976 no longer has the power to shock. You’re wrong. Get ready.

Charles B. Pierce – the creator of the opus that’s about to unspool – grew up in Hampton, Arkansas, afraid of the stories of the Phantom Killer who attacked eight people within ten weeks. Five of those victims were killed between February 22, 1946 and May 3, 1946. And the killer was never caught. The filmmaker was looking to follow up The Legend of Boggy Creek while avoiding a sequel. He wanted to stay within his lane – creating inexpensive films set in and targeting the small rural towns of the Southeastern United States. And then he remembered those harrowing tales from his childhood.

What emerged was a film unafraid to go all the way. Just look at the lurid ad campaign, which stated that “in 1946 this man killed five people…today he still lurks the streets of Texarkana, Ark.” This tagline enraged town officials so much that they threatened to sue Pierce, as the wounds of the Phantom Killer’s psychological assault were still fresh thirty years after the actual murders. But this is a film that presents plenty of strange juxtapositions. As upset as the town officials got, the film has closed the Texarkana’s Spring Lake Park Movies in the Park Series every year since 2003.

That sense of duality hit me when I was in your shoes, watching this for the first time, at a drive-in similar to the one you find yourself in. I was confounded by the abrupt shifts in tone that this movie contains. Much like Boggy Creek, it’s constructed as if it were a documentary about the events, but then it quickly shifts in tone to pure horror. And then it makes a complete turn into goofball comedy, often at the expense of the idiotic patrolman A.C. “Spark Plug” Benson (yep, also Charles B. Pierce, as this is an auteur project if you’ve ever seen one).

At first, I hated these scenes of comic relief. But over multiple (and I do mean multiple) rewatches of the film, I’ve come to appreciate them and wonder if Pierce knew that they’d lull the viewer into forgetting that they are watching a film willing to give into its most base notions. Pierce stated that he made this film so violent because the real story wasn’t something he wanted to people to glaze over and forget. Sometimes, there are subtle moments, such as when the camera stays on the Phantom’s face for a full ten seconds as he breathes in and out, staring directly at the viewer. But there are also moments of absolute mania and menace here. The film goes off the rails into unhinged slasher territory years before anyone would codify horror cinema with that subgenre.

After tonight, you may never look at a trombone the same way again (it’s also worth mentioning that in the film’s most gruesome kill, Pierce used his real life girlfriend as the victim). And while so many movies of this era promise a big name cameo in the hopes of gaining an audience, often that big name would step in and out of a scene. Here, Dawn Wells shows up and the squeaky clean Mary Ann from TV’s Gilligan’s Island is treated with anything but kid gloves – more like contempt as she gets brutalized in a scene that had me retroactively concerned for her safety. And in the very next scene, after enduring so much onscreen pain, there’s another screwball comedy scene! It makes you wonder if Pierce was either a genius adept at putting you through a psychological wringer or the most inept pacer ever. Maybe he was both!

This is a movie with no easy answers – just like real life. There were Phantom suspects, but no one was ever caught. And at the end, even when the narrator claims that “Texarkana hasn’t changed much,” the idea that the Phantom is still out there lingers. The presence of the faceless killer lurks in every frame, as cuts to shoes or people listening from the shadows happen frequently. There is no reveal, no solution, no wrap-up. Even at the end, when the crowd gathers to watch The Town That Dreaded Sundown at a Texarkana movie theater – yes, meta was around in 1976, they’re queuing up for the same film you just watched – the Phantom could be anyone in that line. Heck, he could be here right now, at the Mahoning Drive-In, enjoying the fact that his legend simply won’t fade away.

When you get home tonight – successfully evading the Phantom, one hopes – I also recommend the 2014 quasi-sequel to this film, one that examines the very same contradictions – like how can a town that hates this legend still celebrate this film – that I’ve noted before. It doesn’t have any moments where cops crossdress for a silly laugh. But it’s filled with honest dread and is one of the few reimaginings that adds to the richness of the film that inspired it.

Like I said, I’m jealous of you, dear reader. That is – unless you’ve seen this movie before. But even then, I still have a tinge of envy. After all, you’re about to watch a frightening movie under the stars. And if you ask me, that’s the closest thing to heaven you’ll find in this world.

My wife wants to go away on a fancy vacation. While horror films have forever enriched my life, they’ve also damaged her chances of going anywhere. The tropics? Have you seen Zombi? A resort like Sandals? I assume that Laura Gemser will show up and I’ll be boiled in a pot. And now, thanks to this movie, we can also cross Mexico off the list.

As much as horror may have curtailed my partner’s opportunity to globetrot, it’s also imparted several important lessons to me. To wit: if your mine is over a Satanic temple where left hands were severed to honor demons and every single worker refuses to go any deeper, perhaps it’s time to find a new mine. And if by chance you discover a miniature coffin with a hand inside it, just leave it where you found it. Don’t take it back to your hotel room. This is why I’ve made it forty six years on this Earth without being possessed or dealing with a face melting cult in the desert.

My true joy in the movie Demonoid comes from reading the review that it received when it was released in 1981 and laughing in their prose faces. How can anyone dislike a movie where a possessed man decides that old school Las Vegas is the best place to hide out? Who can dismiss a film where Samantha Eggar obviously dressed herself in some of the most astounding fashions that the early 80’s could unleash? The woman wears an ascot and oversized orange counter to explore a mine (let’s be fair, every outfit she wears in this movie are a paradox, somehow both gorgeous and ridiculous at the same time). And damn anyone who speaks ill of Stuart Whitman! This former boxer and soldier had already played Jim Jones — I’m sorry, James Johnson — in Guyana: Crime of the Century, released less than a year after that tragedy? Here, he plays a battling Catholic priest who we just know could win over Ms. Eggar if he didn’t have that pesky collar and angel on his shoulder to worry about.

Maybe they weren’t watching the Mexican cut (Macabra!), which has more dialogue, more death and a different ending? Look, you can’t please all of the people all of the time. And most of those critics, they never got pleased all that much anyways. Demonoid is worth the whole lot of them. Would they dare to feature an ending so downbeat after 98 minutes of rooting for our British heroine? I dare say no. They’d be afraid to insert so many flashing shots of a demon raising his fist, they’d be too concerned about a soundtrack that practically screams in your face and they’d sooner hide behind their film theory books than make a movie in 1981 that feels like it came from 1974.

Demonoid is why I watch movies. Samantha Eggar screaming at the top of her lungs while a mine explodes all around her? There. An appearance by Haji, she of Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill!, Bigfoot, Supervixens and the wonderfully titled Wam Bam Thank You Spaceman(whose real name Barbarella Catton wasn’t sexy enough for a stage name)? You got me. Overacting in nearly every scene? I’m riveted. A poster that promised nubile ladies reclining for a fallen angel carrying a gigantic sword? I might have piddled a little.

Keep your Oscar picks and guilty pleasures. I have no such taste or qualms. Give me Demonoid or give me a severed left hand!

This article originally appeared in Drive-In Asylum #13, which you can get right here!