"Bubba didn't do it!"
Dark Night Of The Scarecrow, 1981, Directed by Frank de Felitta (Made-For-TV)
Grade: A
I watched this movie by total mistake. It first aired in 1981, and then was re-run on CBS in 1985. I had gotten my first VCR the year before, and I think I was trying to record ABC's airing of Superman II. (You know, back in the days where once a movie aired on TV, that was it! Ain't no Hulu for you, so you better record it!). Anyway, I had programmed in the wrong channel, and it started recording this instead. I was intrigued, so my younger brother and I started watching it. After about 30 minutes we had to turn it off, because it freaked us out so bad.
Am I actually saying this about an el-cheapo TV movie starring NOBODY famous? Yep. I actually saved the recording and ended up watching it in its entirety about a year later. And it is seriously one creepy-ass film. I still can't believe that CBS aired this. Considering how "politically correct" we've become as a society, there is no way this could air today. It gives a bad connotation to scarecrows everywhere. I wonder if Ray Bolger wrote in and complained?
The plot basically involves a wrongfully accused mentally handicapped man and the so-called "justice" that is carried out towards him. Said accused "hides" in a scarecrow (so convenient that its clothes perfectly fit him) and meets an untimely execution by a bigot gang of misfits led by Charles Durning. (He's a mailman who apparently has a power trip for his governmental employment, since he wears his uniform throughout the ENTIRE movie). As it turns out, these fellas messed with the wrong guy and now The "Scarecrow" stalks the backwoods hillbilly land to kill them all one by one and steal their cans of Skoal. Look out!
Filled with a creepy atmosphere and containing more blowing gusts of wind than you could find in the empty stands of a Hanson reunion concert, Dark Night Of The Scarecrow may be a micro-budget TV-movie, but it achieves the cinematic scares of a theatrical release.
And it's scarier than just about any episode of Hee Haw. (Well, maybe not.)
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