DARK NIGHT OF THE SCARECROW (1981)

OVERLOOKED HORROR MOVIES PART 4

This is a made for TV movie directed by Frank DeFelitta that started airing in 1981. I remember seeing this a few times when I was a kid and some of the scenes stuck in my head for years. I forgot the title of the movie for a long time but the images never left my head. This is an exceptionally creepy film with a great story which richly deserves a proper DVD release, but that may never be possible because the TV network that owns the rights to it doesn't look like they'll give it up any time soon. That's what I heard amyway.

This is a story about a mentally retarded man named Bubba played by Larry Drake, who does an outstanding job in my opinion. Anyway, Bubba becomes the best friend of a young girl (played by Tonya Crowe) in a small country town, but a local group of rednecks (headed by Charles Durning who plays the local mail carrier) don't like the idea of them together and decide from then, they'll find any excuse to use him as a convenient scapegoat.

The one day, Bubba and the girl are playing, and she sneaks into someone's yard through the fence. and a dog attacks her until she's unconscious, but Bubba thinks he's killed her, so of course the rumors start flying pretty quickly. After Bubba is mistakenly accused of murdering her, Durning and crew get together then hunt down and kill him in cold blood as he tries to hide by pretending to be a scarecrow, only to then find out that not only did he not kill her but she's alive and he saved her life. They are taken to trial but manage to get their charges dropped by a biased judge, despite the fact that they shot him 21 times. But soon find that "there is other justice besides the law" as quoted by Bubba's mother, and begin to meet their fates one at a time.

From here on in, creepy shit starts happening. The same scarecrow that Bubba tried to hide in starts popping up in the fields of the killers and offing them one by one. There are some pretty original death scenes. One of the men gets chewed into hamburger by his own woodchipper, another gets trapped in a silo then gets buried alive by grain falling in on him. I won't spoil the last gruesome scene for those of you who haven't seen it. Let's just say that the ending was great. Movies like this usually fall apart before the end, but this one doesn't.

Durning does a great acting job and keeps the atmosphere dark and tense. Throughout the film you just hate him more and more and by the end of the film, you can't wait for him to get it. It's pretty funny at times to see the insane expressions on his face.

Anyway, like I said, I don't think they'll be a legit DVD issue of this anytime soon, so if you want to see it, your best bet is to keep checking Ebay. There are countless bootleg DVD-rom versions of it out there but I can't say how good the quality is, cause I never bought one. I'd recommend trying to find a used copy of the video from Ebay or try to find a torrent of it.