Dark Night of the Scarecrow

I just finished rewatching this 1981 horror flick this morning. For some reason, scarecrows, creepy ones in horror movies, always seem to get me most weirded out! I am not sure why except perhaps to say that everyone has their thing that creeps them out. I can handle blood, guts, bugs, chainsaws, knives, creepy kids....blah blah...none of that seems to bother me at all. I can take a scarecrow too, cause who doesn't love the Scarecrow in The Wizard of Oz movie?!

But perhaps this was the movie that made me feel like the creepy scarecrow masks and costumes, were the more scariest! The rotting pumpkin heads or maybe even taking me back to the old classic Headless Horseman? 

So I watched Dark Night of the Scarecrow, starring Charles Durning. It's about a mentally handicapped man who is killed cause some of the towns people, this group of men, decide to go vigilante as they think he killed this little girl he was innocently playing with. Of course after they kill him, they find out that no, he didn't harm the girl at all and she isn't dead and in fact, the handicapped man had saved her life! Uh oh....

Well, of course the tables get turned and "Bubba" gets revenge and you are just not sure if it is him or the lawyer or the little girl or dead Bubba's mom that is going after the men who murdered Bubba.

It's a bit of a "B" movie and it struck me as being sad watching it this time around. Sad that people are too quick to blame a mentally handicapped person for something bad happening instead of waiting for the facts to be revealed, jumping the gun and in fact committing murder themselves based on those assumptions. Reminds me of the whole mob mentality. Of course you begin to see what a horrid man Charles Durning plays as one of the men who killed Bubba and in fact had led the others to do so along with him.

The little girl is kinda creepy herself tho' with the little song she keeps singing everywhere. I can see where they could have jumped on that and played her singing it more often and how that would have really made the whole movie alot more eerie! But the scarecrow showing up in places was good too!

It's not too bad of a movie, it was touched up in 2010, tho' I don't remember how the quality was back in '81. It's worth watching at least once tho'.

You can still get it for $12. 

Take note of the pitchfork tho' in the beginning....heh heh...it comes back to haunt one of the men...