Night of the Scarecrow (1995)

There are two types of scarecrow movies; those that aren't half bad and those that are downright silly and Night of the Scarecrow falls into the latter category. Movie gets going with the town mayor holding a speech complete with college brass band for the grand opening of a new mall as an indication that the alleged sleepy one horse farming town is actually thriving. While this is going on there's an argument ensuing between 2 guys and it ends up with one happening to fire the other one for his irresponsible ways. That night the recently fired young man does what every country rube appears to do in these situations; get drunk, break into a shed, steal a tractor and drive dangerously through a corn field. In doing so they happen to drive over a large stone slab implanted in the ground with a cross carved into the surface. Once that is done, an evil presence emerges and transfers into a nearby scarecrow, refilling it with fresh straw. The scarecrow then sets about killing people. It's not until you're halfway into the movie that a recently attacked priest tells the story of the town founders 100 years prior and a deal they made with a warlock. The townspeople were starving, the ground was unfit for growing, so they made this pact to enable bumper crops and good times. In return the warlock seduced the towns women forcing them to engage in debauchery; including the daughter of the town leader. Using the warlocks spell book against him, they crucified him, waited for him to die then burnt his body and buried it in the cornfield. The bones had a spell cast and the stone slab placed over as a seal. Normally after you'd hear a story like this you'd be thinking the person is drunk or spaced out and in need of a lot of therapy, but not our 2 hapless heroes, this rambling fantastical story just spurs them into action of tracking down a killer scarecrow. Now the scarecrow, possessed by the warlock spirit, is going around getting revenge on the descendants of the town founders and hunting down his book so he can be a real live boy again. The race is on to find the old guys bones and dispose of them once and for all. The story of age old revenge and great great grandsons/daughters having to pay the price for old misdeeds has been done to death in a thousand other horror movies and it's been done much better than in this outing. The idea of killing the very people who have the information on the whereabouts of whatever the demon/ghost/spirit/scarecrow etc happens to be looking for always seemed counterproductive to me but seeing as I'm not any of those things yet, what do I know? I do know that as far as scarecrow movies go, this is far from being great and there's no real reason to go out of your way to hunt this down. It's worth a look on late night TV or a "let's make fun of stupid horror movies" marathon.

This minor but amusing shocker may get confused with another movie that bears a similar premise, with a similar name: the 1981 TV horror story 'Dark Night of the Scarecrow'. This can boast some atmosphere, and a fair bit of style (courtesy under-rated genre director Jeff Burr ("From a Whisper to a Scream", "Stepfather II")), as well as some entertaining effects work. It's nowhere near as good as its almost-namesake, but at least it doesn't appear to be taking itself too seriously. It also gives some enjoyable showcase roles to a roster of character actors.Super sexy Claire (Elizabeth Barondes) returns home to the small California town where her dad William (Gary Lockwood) is the mayor. She's just in time, too: soon after she gets there drunken youngster Danny (John Hawkes of 'Deadwood' and "Winter's Bone") desecrates the resting place of a spirit that then proceeds to inhabit the body of a scarecrow; said scarecrow goes about slaughtering the descendants of the man who attempted to put the spirit to rest. Claire teams up with hunky local Dillon (John Mese) to fight the rampaging scarecrow.The good thing is that "Night of the Scarecrow" isn't boring. Burr keeps it lively and makes sure that it never stops moving. The monster itself, played by Howard Swain, inspires no fright at all, and in fact all scenes with it come off as silly. The special effects, a mixture of mechanical, makeup, and digital work, are generally pretty good, and it is fun to see characters suffer a variety of truly nasty and imaginative fates. These are the kinds of things one simply has to laugh at. Impressive camera-work and good spooky music by Jim Manzie help to keep this watchable.The actors do their best at selling this standard material. Barondes is very easy on the eyes, which doesn't hurt at all. Bruce Glover ("Walking Tall", "Chinatown") gets an opportunity to tear into the scenery as the local minister - the type of minister who peruses risqué photos when alone in his church, Stephen Root ("Office Space", 'NewsRadio') is fine as the sheriff, Dirk Blocker ("Poltergeist", "Prince of Darkness") appears as a farmer, and Lockwood ("2001: A Space Odyssey", "Firecreek") is amusing as the mayor. Cult actress Martine Beswick plays Glovers' wife, and Duane Whitaker and Joe Unger are Roots' deputies.A decent if unremarkable viewing for the horror fanatic, "Night of the Scarecrow" does begin and end with a flourish. One could do worse.Seven out of 10.

A group of drunk teenagers accidentally set free the spirit of a warlock, which possesses a scarecrow and terrorizes the small farming community of Hanford.Mike Mayo says the film "is nicely photographed with a few bloody good touches". I think this is pretty spot on. The movie really does look pretty sharp, particularly for an independent film, and the gore is respectable. Any horror fan should eat it right up. The special effects, for the most part, were above and beyond what you might expect.Lead actress Elizabeth Barondes was likable. I do not recall ever seeing her in anything else (although she did the remake of "Not of This Earth" the same year), but she deserved to be a bigger star. Apparently too late now, as she has moved on to become an interior designer. The rest of the cast is good, too, and fans of "Dodgeball" or "Office Space" will appreciate Stephen Root in the role of a sheriff.Of particular interest to me was the "orgy" scene. Filmed in crisp sepia, with plenty of throbbing and corpulent flesh. These are not all beautiful people, but they are animalistic, and I think director Jeff Burr really did himself a favor by including this scene, pushing the boundaries of the film just a bit further.Burr, in general, deserves respect. Sadly, this film is probably overshadowed by the similarly named "Dark Night of the Scarecrow". But they are both good films and have their own sensibilities. This one is much darker, much more gory. Burr's career is one horror sequel after another, which he does fine at, but his best work shines through in his original pieces like this one and "From a Whisper to a Scream".As of 2012, Olive Films has finally released this movie on to DVD and Blu-Ray for the first time. I have not seen their version, but I hope it is cleaned up nice and has a special feature or two. The Netflix streaming version is full frame and somewhat fuzzy, suggesting a VHS transfer. I know this film does not have the fan following of other mid-1990s horror films, but perhaps with the Netflix exposure more people will push the right people to give this film a decent release.

Nice movie. One of the best that I have seen. Crappy ending though. When the girl was strapped to the post with barbed wire. Why did she not get the seed in her mouth. If you like bloody horror flicks with a little bit of porn this movies for you. I would rate it ***** stars. An excellently done horror movie.