SCARECROWS (1988)

SCARECROWS (1988)

Tagline: They Only Want A Brain ... Yours.

(Horror, Thriller, Corn) [R]

Damn, I really miss my harmonica…

In this one, a well-trained group of thieves steals the Camp Pendleton payroll and are using a plane to get to Mexico. They have also kidnapped the pilot and his daughter, but when a couple members of the team get greedy, they steal the money and jump out of the plane, but lose track of it. The rest of the team lands try to find their betrayers. It doesn’t take long before they encounter a creepy house guarded by supernatural scarecrows that have the ability to reanimate their victims. Will they survive the night of the SCARECROWS? 

First off, I find it nearly comical that the movie categories on several websites are “Action, Crime” then “Horror”. Yes, the movie has action and crime, but it’s far more a straight-up horror flick. It’s also a pretty gory horror flick which isn’t really a plus in my book, but that is what’s going on here. 

This thing is sufficiently creepy throughout and lots of weirdness ensues. One thing I kind of wish they hadn’t done in this is to give the scarecrows voices that mimic their victims. While this isn’t overused, the fact that it’s used at all is creepy at first, but feels off-putting and actually detracts from the horror feel over time. What does work really well is that this movie is shot nearly all in the dark. Combined with some decent lighting this works although for the most part horror movies that are shot almost completely in the dark are total crap because you can’t see anything. This movie doesn’t have that issue, at least for me and I don’t have the greatest eyesight. That little tidbit might also explain why my reviews are so terrible. Just kidding. 

Acting wise this is pretty rough, so it’s clear the director was relying heavily on the idea of this one to carry all the weight. Victoria Christian plays the female lead in this and is probably the second-best actress in this. She did manage to end up in 7 different acting projects up through 2004. The best actress in this is probably Kristina Sanborn who plays Roxanne. She is sort of the Cynthia Rothrock of this movie, but she’s not doing any martial arts. It’s more an attitude than anything. I rarely make a blanket statement like this, but pretty much every male in the movie is a stock character given painfully bad dialog. For me, this is pretty forgivable in horror flicks when it’s not an established series that draws big names. 

It seems like most horror fans appreciated how gnarly and atmospheric this thing was while others thought there was too much action. I really didn’t get that at all. Yes, there are military-style characters and machine guns, but I’d consider it full-blown horror with a few weapons involved. One thing that lends to the creep factor is that the scarecrows are never explained. All we get is a bit of conjecture and assumptions. One character that the clowns are clearly after openly states that the scarecrows are not after them. So this kind of tells you that even the character's assumptions are bogus. 

Overall this is a 3 out of 7 for me, but most gory horror fans I think would have it at a 4 out of 7. I do wish we had gotten at least a tiny bit of character development for the main characters. Outside of the concept and creativity, this one feels very incomplete. Just in the sense that maybe we had a “type” of character the writer wanted, but they had no idea what to do with them after that. 

GRAPHICS ARE THE PROPERTY OF EFFIGY FILMS AND ARE USED FOR REVIEW PURPOSES ONLY. 

Please check out the link below by clicking on the picture. Purchases made at Indy Planet for any issue of DARK 30 will go towards funding the next issue.