DARK NIGHT OF THE SCARECROW (1981)
Tagline: An All-New Chiller for Halloween!
In this one, a kind developmentally disabled man named Bubba befriends a young girl Marylee (chillingly played by Tonya Crowe) whom he spends a lot of time playing. Some of the folks in the town have an issue with it, because of some sort of stick up their butt’s, and pretty much chase Bubba down every time they see him hanging out with this girl. At one point an incident happens and Bubba is immediately and falsely accused of murdering the girl. This ignites the town’s hatred of him (especially four men) and Bubba is hunted down and killed, after trying to hide by disguising himself as a scarecrow. I won’t give too much else away if you haven’t seen this, but this is one of the great setups in horror movie history. I pretty much loved that about this movie.
Some storylines are amazing at making you feel almost sympathetic toward the reason the slasher became a slasher in the first place (of course just from the perspective of a horror movie viewer). Other movies don’t even bother with that, or the backstory is so bad, it feels like an afterthought. Like when they are building a house and decide to cram that damn 3rd bathroom in a spot the size of a toaster. As mentioned above the backstory is not just told, but shown and it’s fantastic at setting the tone. Bubba is played by Larry Drake, who was an extremely versatile actor appearing in everything from the TV series Firefly to DARKMAN. Charles Durning is also pretty terrifying in this movie playing Otis (seemingly the town’s only mailman) giving a performance that would have ended any chances he had a babysitting…like ever.
I have to give massive credit to the film and score for creating the perfect atmospherics for a horror flick but the lack of blood and an actual killer for a huge part of this movie is an odd directing choice by the era’s standards. It also makes this thing bizarrely unique in a time when film companies were handing out slasher flicks like candy.
For my rating on this one, I am going to keep in mind that this was a made-for-TV movie. I am guessing that some of the sensitivities of the day and even today kept this movie from showing the actual scarecrow, in any of the intense horror scenes. It’s likely some felt that showing someone that was special needs ending up getting revenge, would paint “all” special needs people in a bad light. I am not really sure about that, but it’s a guess. It’s also possible none of that was the case and the idea was to give this thing a more super-natural element to increase, not decrease the scare factor. I imagine growing up in the Midwest in the early 80s, this movie probably did scare the living crap out of a lot of people.
I give this movie a 4 out of 7. It is pretty solid and is a decent horror flick for 80’s slasher fans who don’t need gore to enjoy a horror movie. I do understand why some however were less than thrilled with this effort.
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