1976
We open on the whitest town in America after the end of WWII. A great time for white people. Wonderful. They still gush over it today like it was some goddamn utopia. But don’t worry white people, because there is one piece of life that doesn’t discriminate: death. He’s coming. And he’s super white.
I didn’t expect this movie to be scary, especially since the title both rhymes and is five words long. Everyone knows the best horror movies are one word: Poltergeist. Vertigo. Precious. But that’s fine, I needed a little camp and a little terrible special effects to ease me into this month.
The opening is like watching those old Popular Mechanics shorts from the 1950s, where your kitchen turns into one giant self cleaning oven so wife can get back to more important things; like ignoring her children and her husband’s alcoholism. So now that I’ve set the idyllic scene, you know where this is going.
The film is set in Texarkana, a small town on the border of Texas and Arkansas. It’s 1946 and serial killers back then were lucky. It was super hard to have sex, so you were apparently legally obligated to go to an open field in the middle of nowhere. Nowadays, kids just have sex in the Chipotle bathroom and go about their day. But at least they don’t get murdered.
The first couple (I’ll call them “weird finger-banging couple”) are victims of a pretty smart guy. First, the killer pops the hood and rips out wires which I presume are important, then grabs the dude and drags him through a window to beat with a lead pipe. We can clearly see what the killer’s costume is now: black boots, jeans, dark button up shirt, white sheet that covers his face with eye-holes. Also known as The KKK Starter Kit.
He then possibly rapes the girl and throws her on the side of the road. She is inevitably saved by a passerby, who is definitely driving drunk and not a good witness. Which I think is probably par for the course in this town. This is the part where the protagonist comes in: Deputy Sheriff Ramsey, who looks EXACTLY like a 70s actor pretending to be in the 40s version of Jim Halpert. It’s a little distracting.
The first couple doesn’t die and the doctor at the hospital is fairly certain the lady wasn’t raped but she did have human bites all over her body. Which is stupid because the mask didn’t even have mouth holes. Maybe in between their weird finger-banging, the couple liked to engage in cannibalism. Serial killers are weird, but white people in the suburbs can be even weirder.
The next round of victims are introduced: A 24 year old vet with 17 year old girl. Sounds like ripe picking for the Chow-down Brown Killer. Especially when the girl accuses her boyfriend “missing the Japanese girls,” like she shouldn’t be worried about VD. We find out it is 3 weeks later and raining like the first night of the attacks. Deputy Sheriff Jim Halpert is worried the cops aren’t looking in enough on couples fucking. And obviously he is right, albeit creepy. This fresh couple slides around the road and while the DS is out patrolling he hears gun shots. He also displays some sweet off-roading moves in his police cruiser.
Deputy Sheriff follows the gun shots which inevitable leads to gun shot up bodies. The dude in a ditch, and the girl tied to a tree. Now despite the fact that it is supposed to be raining and at night, there is blue sky, because night shooting is stupid (or at least that’s what the studio probably said to the director). It’s fine, we can clearly see White Hood strolling confidently to his car and then clearly see the Deputy Sheriff miss his chance to take out the killer. Or he didn’t shoot because he just wants to see how this is all going to play out.
Back in town, the townspeople are buying up guns and putting up locks on the door like they just got their first black president. Obviously the police and sheriffs departments can’t handle it. They couldn’t even handle shooting a black car in the middle of broad night light! So in order to calm the fears, they enlist a detective from Austin who is nicknamed The Lone Wolf of the Texas Rangers. Just like the film’s title, this name is far too long, so I’m just going to refer to him as LoWo. This guy gets to town and ready to do some business, like set up stings and dress the sergeants in drag, because when you’re in Texarkana, you gotta make your own fun.
Of course curfews and patrols aren’t going to stop people from screwing, but the investigation gets compromised as people start confessing to the murders. This is why people in the 40s needed TV. When you got bored, I guess you just start confessing to murders to break up the day.
At the same time the cops are trying out for Drag Race, the high school prom is happening. And oddly there are NO cops at this dance. Which is ridiculous. We had cops at our dances whether there were serial killers on the loose or not. So the kids and chaperones are going to get lit without the watchful eye of cops or DWI checkpoints.
We are now introduced to dumb couple #3. The girl is a trombone player in the band and the boyfriend just wants his tromb–you know what, they just make this shit too easy. The girlfriend complains that she has a curfew (bitch calm down, the whole town has a curfew). However, her boyfriend justifies going to park, by saying they’ll be in the “city limits,” because everyone knows how much killers hate city limits. So off they go, blissfully unaware how uncool playing a trombone in high school is.
White Mask starts to sneak up on their car but they start to drive away. But not before the killer can jump on the running board and hang on like he is the world champion at skitchin’. He drags the boyfriend out of the car and the car keeps going until it ends up on a bramble patch, tossing the girl out. Trombone lady runs through the woods in her prom dress, because the real FBI will actually arrest you if you don’t include this cliche scene in your horror movie. White Mask Mouth Breather picks her up and ties her to a tree.
The boyfriend isn’t dead yet, and wakes up from his round with the killer’s fists (this guy is NOT consistent with his weapons) and realizes half his face is bashed in and he is just as useless as he was before. He starts to run away but gets shot dead. Tree girl knows she’s about to get it, but killer is more interested in her trombone, because he needs new ways to kill that not even the Japanese have thought up. He must have been kicked out of a band, because he stabs the girl with her own trombone and doesn’t even have the decency to play a diddy while she dies. Another moment when having a mouth opening would have helped.
Back in town, press and experts are convening. A famous prison psychiatrist (which is a legitimate career in Texas, apparently) is now explaining to the sheriffs and cops what a “serial killer” is and what they are “into” over a fancy dinner. I love these explanation scenes, because they literally haven’t changed in the history of movies. The cops are more interested in why the killer didn’t rob the victims, and the psychiatrist really wants to bring the conversation back to sadism. Across the restaurant we only see the boots of the killer, as he politely pays for his meal and leaves. Killers: They’re Just Like Us!
The police chase down a few leads, including a dapper looking armed robber from Shreveport who drives a mint green car. I would watch a movie just about this guy. He (of course) confesses to the serial murders and the cops have had just about enough of this, so they stick him the back of a police cruiser with the fattest, sweatiest detective. Dapper Dan comes clean and the cops realize they are back to square one.
We now see people going about their business and enjoying summer, which is cue for another murder. Here come ol’ boots and we see him follow a lady home from the grocery store to her farm. Unfortunately for farm wife, her dumb husband doesn’t notice someone lurking outside and subsequently gets shot twice through a window. The wife tries to call police but gets shot in the face and head but still is alive. What kind of bullets are these?! The husband took two bullets to his head and was still able to walk for a bit before making a mess of the living room.
The farm wife hides out in the garage where Pillowcase Face picks up a pickaxe to finish the job. And presumably to use on the gun seller who sold him “non-murdering” bullets. Now for a game of corn maze which follows blood and items of clothes through the field. I’m pitch it a an app next week. FarmKille.
We hear dogs barking and we know farm lady (his husband is dead, she dropped the “wife”) has reached a neighbors house, who either aren’t home or have the good sense to not open the door to bloodied women who were shot in the fucking face. Of course the dogs barking alerts the killer where the lady is, which unfortunately is with a heavily armed elderly couple.
The lady lives. But now that people know the killer is a fan of looking in windows, they board up their houses like a damn hurricane is coming, and not summer in Texas. These people gonna dies of heat exhaustion. More cops show up, more curfews in place. However, now the killer isn’t following the dates anymore, because i assume the calendar the gun shop gave him was just as defective as the bullets.
A call for the most common looking car in america (which looks exactly like the police cars) comes over the radio and Deputy Sheriff and LoWo follow a lead into the woods, which ends at a sand pit. Now I can’t tell if this is a naturally occurring sand pit or more like a sand quarry. But I guess people in Texas need sand. They see White Mask standing atop a sand hill (and now we know he wears his costume all the time; probably a Stanislavski method man). They chase him into the woods, then across train tracks and end up shooting him in the leg, but the killer is still able to run away because every bullet in this town is defective. They bring in the bloodhounds which leads to a bayou. Which I guess they have in Texarkana. The the bloodhounds lose the scent and we never see him again. My theory is that he definitely died of MRSA from that nasty swamp.
The most amazing part of this movie is the ending, because we find out the chief and the sheriff are reelected for THREE more terms! Because i know when I have murders on my watch, it’s a sure shoo-in. The killer is never caught and true to “based on a true story” genre, he shows up at the premiere of his own movie. Killers are so meta.
And this, kids, is why we don’t live in small towns. And don’t ever buy your bullets from Texarkana.
Lower It Up 