DARK NIGHT OF THE SCARECROW

Dark Night of the Scarecrow Movie Review

After being falsely accused of hurting a little girl, the mentally challenged Bubba Ritter (Larry Drake) is hunted down and killed by a lynch mob. After those four men are found not guilty of their crimes, they begin dying under mysterious circumstances. Has Bubba come back for revenge, or is somebody else seeking revenge on Ritter's behalf? That is the premise of this 1981 film, which is considered by many to be one of the all-time best made-for-television movies. Around the year 2000, an old friend of mine told me about this movie--we were talking about the scariest movies we had ever seen, and he mentioned seeing this when he was a kid, and how it somehow stuck with him. I searched it out around that time, but to no avail. I finally did watch the movie about ten years later, and liked it enough to have seen it twice since (streaming channels make stuff like this much easier to find these days). 

Thanks Tubi!

Keep in mind, this is a made-for-television movie that came out in 1981, so you're not going to get a ton of carnage and gore, but this flick does a fantastic job bringing the scares without gallons of blood. There is a theory in horror that says the scariest death scenes are ones that leave something to the imagination--I don't always buy into the theory, but in Dark Night of the Scarecrow, this is executed wonderfully. The acting is probably a little better than you will expect as well, and Charles Durning (Pappy O'Daniel in O Brother, Where Art Thou?) turns in a grossly underappreciated performance as Otis P. Hazelrigg, the mail carrier who leads the lynch mob. Honestly, when conversation turns to the greatest villains in horror history, Otis should be brought up more often than he is.

"Thanks. You will be spared...for now"

Not all is great with this movie, however. The opening kind of reminds me a bit too much of an iconic scene from Frankenstein, drawing a somewhat uncomfortable comparison to the Monster from that film and Bubba here. The court sequence is a bit rough too--one can't help but wonder if the judge, who saw no evidence of the crimes, went on to be a jury member for the O.J. murder trail. Unfortunately, the ending, especially the low-speed chase (go ahead and make another O.J. reference here if you would like), takes some air out of the balloon as well. Still, Dark Night of the Scarecrow truly earns its status as not just one of the finer made-for-tv movies of all time, but also of a really good horror film.

On A Scale Of One To Ten: 7

A most fantastic lead in to the airing of Dark Night of the Scarecrow