Tradition
Every October near Halloween, the movie The Town That Dreaded Sundown, which is loosely based on Texas Ranger Captain M. T. "Lone Wolf" Gonzaullas' investigation into the murders, is the last movie shown to the public during "Movies in the Park" at Spring Lake Park (where the second double murder occurred) when the weather permits, or at the Southwest Center (near where the first double murder occurred) when it does not. Movies in the Park plays four movies in the months of May and October, with The Town That Dreaded Sundown being last. The free event is sponsored by The Texarkana, Texas Department of Parks & Recreation. The showing of the movie has been a tradition since 2003. About 600 people showed up at the showing in 2008.
Texarkana, Texas Parks & Recreation Department Director Robby Robertson in 2009 said many people have called and asked for a DVD copy of the film. There is no official release on DVD and it isn't very easy to get. Robertson said, "It's still shown only on VHS tape and those aren't even available anymore." He also said that the city can't go to a local video store to rent or buy the film. Instead, because of legal restrictions, the city has to rent it through a movie distributor for $175 to $200 per showing.
Read more about this topic: Texarkana Moonlight Murders
Famous quotes containing the word tradition:
“Almost always tradition is nothing but a record and a machine-made imitation of the habits that our ancestors created. The average conservative is a slave to the most incidental and trivial part of his forefathers’ glory—to the archaic formula which happened to express their genius or the eighteenth-century contrivance by which for a time it was served.”
—Walter Lippmann (1889–1974)
“Because it’s not only that a child is inseparable from the family in which he lives, but that the lives of families are determined by the community in which they live and the cultural tradition from which they come.”
—Bernice Weissbourd (20th century)
“The tradition I cherish is the ideal this country was built upon, the concept of religious pluralism, of a plethora of opinions, of tolerance and not the jihad. Religious war, pooh. The war is between those who trust us to think and those who believe we must merely be led.”
—Anna Quindlen (b. 1952)