Night of the Scarecrow

Night of the Scarecrow

Released: 1995

MPAA Rating: R

Genre: Witch/Warlock

Nuts and Bolts: The Goodman family becomes the unwitting victims of a living killer Scarecrow in the small town of Hanford. But the Goodmans are also the proprietors of a 100-year-old family secret that may pave the way towards stopping the Scarecrow's bloody rampage. Can Claire Goodman learn the secret of the Scarecrow before any more people are killed?

Summary: Claire Goodman returns to the small farming town of Hanford after living many years abroad. Her father William is the mayor of Hanford, and her uncles represent some of the town’s finest leading citizens. Claire meets Dillon Haley, an employee of her father’s. Dillon is seen arguing with young Danny Thompson, an employee in his charge. Having had enough of Danny’s drunken behavior he fires him. Dillon then addresses Claire and makes several smarmy remarks about the Mayor before he comes to realize that Claire is his daughter. Claire isn’t put off by it however and invites Dillon to dinner. Perhaps the presence of a guest will help relax the tensions between her estranged father and she.

Later that night, a drunken Danny Thompson and his friend decide to steal one of the bulldozers from the construction site where they worked. They plow the thing through an old cornfield. The grader blade scrapes along the ground and cracks open a heavy cement seal that had been buried beneath the Earth. In front of the bulldozer is a large scarecrow suspended in the middle of the cornfield. The kids, having tired of their fun decides to leave. Arcane energies erupt from the broken seal and strikes at the Scarecrow. The being is energized with a fresh soul and comes to life.

Meanwhile, Dillon attends the Goodman Thanksgiving dinner party. Here we meet Claire’s uncles. We have: George, the beer guzzling farmer who owns most of the corn fields in Hanford; Thaddeus, the local Priest as well his wife Barbara and daughter Stephanie; and lastly we have Frank the town the Sheriff.

After dinner, George returns to his farmhouse. He hears some strange noises coming from the barn and goes to investigate. The Scarecrow appears and pins George to the wall by way of a pitchfork. He then drives a plow into the trapped man’s body ripping him to pieces. The Scarecrow leaves the farm, but Claire takes notice of him disappearing into the cornfields. Discovering George’s body she races home to tell her family. William, Frank and Thaddeus exchange glances as Claire describes seeing someone in the fields. Despite Claire’s declaration, the family tends to regard George’s death as a drunken accident. Her father tells her that she probably imagined seeing someone.

Later that evening, Thaddeus goes out to the old cornfield. He finds the broken seal and knows that the old family secret has been unleashed. He now realizes that George didn’t die because of an alcohol related accident.

Meanwhile, Claire goes to a local bar with Dillon. She explains to him what has happened and is confident that she did not simply ‘imagine’ seeing a strange man walking through the fields. Also in the bar is Danny Thompson. Danny is still sore at Dillon for firing him and the two almost come to blows. Danny leaves the bar to visit his girlfriend Stephanie Goodman.

Before Danny arrives at Stephanie’s house however, Thaddeus returns home. He finds that his daughter has been receiving ‘Our Secret’ catalogues in the mail and takes it away from her. He then goes to his church to pray for her soul. (Our Secret is this world’s version of Victoria’s Secret) At the church, Thaddeus begins thumbing through the catalogue and begins getting turned on by all the images. Realizing that what he is doing is a sin, he races to the alter to pray to Jesus for the strength to resist temptation. The Scarecrow enters the church. With a raspy demonic voice he queries, “Where’s my book?” Thaddeus is terrified and tries to flee from the creature. But the Scarecrow nabs him and using thread from his own body begins to sew Thaddeus’ lips shut. Not finding his book, he leaves the injured priest to go hunt down the extended family.

Meanwhile, Danny takes Stephanie out to his van for a night of good ole fashioned humping. He stops mid-coitus in order to go get a cold beer. (What the fuck?!?) While he’s outside, the Scarecrow comes up behind him and clubs him over the head. He then enters the van and attacks Stephanie. The Scarecrow produces a seed on the end of his fingertip and inserts it into the screaming girl’s mouth. The seed grows and all of a sudden a horde of vines begin sprouting outward from her body. The vines stretch outside and take root in the ground. Stephanie is dragged from the van and pulled underground. Danny revives and tries to get away but the Scarecrow corners him and tears him to pieces.

Back at the Goodman home, Frank and William argue about what is occurring. Each man seems to know a hidden truth regarding George’s death. Frank refuses to believe that his brother’s death could have resulted from anything other than a random murder. But William knows the truth about the Scarecrow.

Claire and Dillon rent a hotel room and they spend the evening heeding the voice of nature. (I guess there really IS nothing better to do in this Podunk town other than fucking.) The next day, Thaddeus Goodman finds them and the two take him in. Claire removes the stitching from his lips, and the priest begins rambling incessantly. Thaddeus now confesses the truth about what is happening in Hanford. He tells them the origin of the Scarecrow.

Over one-hundred-years ago, the town of Hanford was settled by the Goodman family. Silas Goodman was its leading citizen as well as spiritual leader. The ground however was hard and not fertile enough for growing. Disease had set in and people were dying of malnutrition and starvation. A strange Warlock came upon the town and entered into a pact with Silas Goodman. He told him that he would use his powers to make the land healthy in exchange for carte blanche permission to do whatever he chose inside the town of Hanford. Having little choice but to concede, Silas agreed to the covenant. In the weeks ahead, the Warlock sired his own little cult, which consisted of satanic orgies and Sabbaths. Even Silas’ daughter was seduced by the Warlock. Finally, Goodman realized that he made a horrible decision and the townspeople of Hanford decided to rebel against the Warlock. The townspeople stole the Warlock’s mystic book and captured the man in his sleep. They drug him out to the middle of a cornfield where he was hung upon a cross. It took him two days to die. They took his body and buried it in a deep shaft in the middle of a field. A heavy cement seal was erected in order to keep him locked up. The book was left in the care of the Goodman family. Every generation of Goodmans ever since erected a Scarecrow to mark the spot where the Warlock died. The story (as well as the book) was passed down to the eldest son of each generation. But now the seal was broken and the Warlock was free. Thaddeus warns Claire and Dillon that should the Scarecrow/Warlock retrieve his book, then he will be able to create a new body for himself and become all powerful.

Claire returns home to try ask her father about the book. But the Scarecrow has already been there. He had attacked Mayor Goodman, pinning him against the wall with a fire poker. William’s body is cocooned with vegetation.

Dillon takes Thaddeus back to his house. While preparing tea, he lets the older man wander about the house. Thaddeus finds his wife Barbara dead in the living room. Her sewing needles are shoved through her face and upon her forehead is a piece of incomplete stitching that reads, “Do unto others…” Thaddeus spins around to find the Scarecrow inside his home. He finishes Thaddeus off by wrapping him up with barbed wire. Meanwhile, Dillon is not yet aware that anything is amiss. Sheriff Frank bursts into the kitchen. He has learned about the death of Danny Thomas and is convinced that Dillon is the murderer. The two go into the other room where they find the bodies of Thaddeus and Barbara. This scene does little to showcase Dillon’s innocence and the Sheriff slaps him in handcuffs. Dillon is thrown into a squad car and taken back to William’s house.

A terrified Claire tells Frank about her father and explains that they need to find the Warlock’s book. They go up into the attic as the Scarecrow bursts in to attack them. Frank tries to keep the Scarecrow at bay with his revolver while Claire finds the tome. The Scarecrow puts Frank down with a slice from a scythe. Claire fights past him and goes outside to the squad car.

Dillon and she drive off until they encounter a roadblock. They desperately try to explain to the men what is happening, but the cops aren’t hearing it. The Scarecrow arrives and kills both officers with the scythe. Claire and Dillon then take off for the old supply shed where Dillon worked. Reading from the book, they learn that the Warlock’s bones must be destroyed forever in order to rid the world of his evil. Claire frees him from the cuffs with bolt cutters and Dillon collects a jar full of acid.

They drive out to the old cornfield where the Warlock first resurrected himself. The Scarecrow arrives with scythe in hand and attacks them anew. He REALLY wants that fucking book! Dillon goes into the grave to try and collect the bones leaving Claire to fight off the Scarecrow. Claire manages to chop one of the creature’s arms off, which is a hell of a lot more than what Dillon accomplished. Stupid butterfingers dropped the jar of acid. Surprisingly, Sheriff Frank survived his first encounter with the Scarecrow. He shows up again, this time sporting a shotgun (for all the good it does). The Scarecrow decides that enough is enough and he sends a spray of sharp hay needles into Frank’s face. I guess acupuncture just isn’t Frank’s style, because the old fucker keels over dead. Claire and Dillon collect the Warlock’s bones and take off again for the supply shed.

The Scarecrow follows them, and the two set a trap. Dillon douses the entire facility in gasoline with the intent of starting a fire. The Scarecrow attacks them and the two dive into an escape chute. (???) Before exiting, Claire throws a flare into the building exploding the entire bunker.

But the Scarecrow isn’t finished yet! Our boy drags his burnt body out into the field to confront his nemesis one final time. He captures Claire and binds her up to a post with barbed wire. He plans on doing the same seed-implanting trick with her that he used on Stephanie. As Claire screams for help, Dillon hops aboard a pile driver that was lying in the field. He drops the thing upon the coffin containing the Warlock’s bones crushing it. The Scarecrow instantly explodes and Claire is free of the seed-vines.

Acting/Dialogue: Everyone is pretty solid in this. Tight performances all around and the dialogue is paced pretty evenly. No one stumbles through their lines or sound like they are reading an ad off the box of a milk carton. Which actually says a lot, since this is a low budget film that has absolutely NO brand name actors in it. The cast succeeds in convincing us that they ARE their characters, and that’s all one can really expect in a Horror movie right? Hey, we can’t ALL be Adam West.

Gore: There are some really cool scenes in this film. The death of George is just gruesome enough as to be riveting, but not so over-the-top that it looks corny. The Priest with the sewn lips was a nice touch as well. We also get some vegetation sprouting up from various people’s body parts. Now I’m not talking Hellraiser lever gore here, but there is some really wild shit to be found. Most of the gore consists of body immolation scenes, so if you’re the type that gets squeamish at the thought of torture scenes, maybe you should go home and curl up with a cup of hot cocoa, a warm blankey and watch an old Snoopy cartoon. Pussies.

Guilty Pleasures: The character of Stephanie Goodman lets her boobies flop about a bit, and we also get an extended scene of a 19th century orgy. The orgy scene isn’t too raunchy, but a nice feast for the eyes all the same. Sorry ladies. Nothing really here for you gals unless you like watching wrinkly sixty year old Quakers performing sodomy.

The Good: This movie kicks ass! I mean it. Night of the Scarecrow is probably one of the most under-rated sleeper Horror hits of the mid 1990s. If you like films like Pumpkinhead or Candyman, I think you’ll find this one to be worth your while. There’s a nice even blend of all the ingredients required to make a successful albeit low budget horror flick: Creepy villain, intriguing back-story, decent characters, ample amounts of gore and an admirable supply of boobies. Doesn’t get much better than that does it?

And what can be better than a pissed off killer Scarecrow? I find it difficult to believe that producers never really tapped into this concept prior to this film (Not counting Scarecrows of course, another decent low budget flick). Scarecrows by nature are just creepy fucking buggers and Director Jeff Burr succeeds in making our Warlock-turned-Scarecrow into a successfully executed movie monster for the 90s. I don’t necessarily find this movie to be all that scary, but it’s nice to see a new breed of spook-monster thrown into the mix. Hell, it could be worse guys! Rather than a Scarecrow, we COULD have been subjected to a mutant killer Snowman!

The dinner scene was a nice touch. It effectively introduced all of the relevant cast members and also illustrated to us just how much of a controlling factor the Goodman family has in Hanford. It’s a fairly short scene, but it gives us everything we need to know and quickly gets the ball rolling.

The pacing is really well done here too. Burr keeps our interest and everything moves at a pretty brisk clip. He doesn’t waste time with senseless exposition and tricky camera shots, but rather he jumps right in to the meat and potatoes of the flick. Even people suffering from attention deficit disorder can easily keep up with this film.

For once, we FINALLY have a movie where the hero of the film is a guy! I am so sick and tired of all these horror flicks coming down to a final fight between the monster and whatever chick wasn’t stupid enough to be caught fucking her boyfriend. I’m sure there’s some kind of thematic psychology available as to why this is always done, but after 972 slasher films, it gets kind of tired. Finally, its time for the GUYS to shine! I am man. Hear me roar! (Okay, now that I’ve got my testosterone-heavy dick stroking moment out of the way, its time for me to curl back up into my submissively wimpy soft-spoken sensitive-guy mode.)

I thought the ending was kind of cool too. Most horror films, the villain has to go through this excruciatingly long-ass death before finally falling over. (And they almost always spring back up for one final chance to nag our protagonists.) But the ending to Night of the Scarecrow is pretty short and sweet. Dillon crushes coffin. Scarecrow explodes. There’s no chintzy dramatic build up or any sort of dumb shit like that. Pretty classy.

Night of the Scarecrow may be a no-brainer, but it succeeds in accomplishing what it set out to do, and that is to make a halfway decent straight to video popcorn muncher. In this, I think it goes above and beyond all expectations.

The Bad: Most of the bad elements of this film are really trivial ones. There are a few scenes of stereotypical banality and there are a few others that just don’t make a lot of sense. And of course there is the all-time most predictable line of dialogue of all.

I am speaking of the scene where Claire and Dillon are getting ready to escape from the gasoline laden supply bunker. Claire lights a flare as the Scarecrow realizes the magnitude of danger that he’s in. As the flare sparks to life, Claire says, “How about a little fire Scarecrow?” and then chucks the thing at him. This line was telegraphed from a mile away. Even Helen Keller could have predicted it. I guess it was just a matter of time before someone busted out with the Wizard of Oz cracks. To be honest, I think the whole bunker scene was orchestrated just so the director would have a good excuse to use that line.

One character that irked the shit out of me was Danny Thompson. This ugly-as-hell ass-clown actually manages to score with the well-endowed Stephanie Goodman (Played by Christi Harris) and what does he do? He gets up in the MIDDLE of fucking her brains out to go and get a cold beer!!!! What a dick! I think even Hollywood heart throb Denzel Washington would get a mouth full of fist for trying a stunt like that. But this dumb ass bitch lets it slide. This turkey shoots off some really God-Awful pick-up lines too. This whole scene actually leads into one of my main criticisms against the film. There’s an over-used horror movie trend of the horny girl mistaking the monster for her boyfriend. After taking care of Danny, the Scarecrow goes into the van and begins stroking the front of Stephanie’s shirt. Stephanie has her eyes closed and begins groaning because she thinks its Danny. I would think the stench of rotting wet straw would clue her in, but no. She groans on and on until finally opening up her eyes to see the villain kneeling before her.

Another trait that seems to occur a lot in these flicks involves the willingness of some people to believe in something ludicrous. The priest walks in and spins this wild crazy tale about 19th century warlocks and books of magic and so on and so on. And everyone is pretty much fine with that. At no point did someone wag his or her finger at the priest and say, “You’re full of shit!”

On the contrast to that however, I also tire of people trying to blame weird shit on the wind or some other dumb crap. Mayer Goodman tries to console his grieving daughter by saying she probably imagined seeing a man outside of George’s farm. George just got drunk and somehow managed to pitchfork his own neck to a wall and from there activate a plow which would then turn him into a Steak Tartar. Now WE as the audience know that Goodman is lying, but Claire is supposed to fall for this crock! I would think that her father’s ambivalence towards the affair might help to clue her in to the fact that he’s full of shit.

There are two other examples of lazy script writing here. Uncle Thaddeus just had his lips sewn shut together by a giant life-size fucking Scarecrow! Instead of going to the hospital or to the police or even to his own family, he instead decides to go to a motel. Claire and Dillon just happened to be staying at that motel, but there was no way that Thaddeus would have known that! I highly doubt that Claire would address her pious priestly uncle and say “Hey Uncle Thad, if you need me I’ll be over in room 233 of the Shlong-a-long Motel having a big fat cock shoved into me!” But I guess, the writers needed to move the plot along, and it was the only for them to have Claire and Dillon re-join the group.

This happens again later after Dillon takes Thad home. While Father Dowling is investigating his last mystery, Sheriff Frank bursts up into the place to arrest Dillon for the murder of Danny Thompson! How in the fuck did Frank know where Dillon was? The only other one who even knew he was there was Claire. It’s not like this is New York City where firecrackers like Jimmy Smits or Dennis Franz will come looking for you. This is God damned fucking Mayberry on Valium! Frank must be one hell of a sheriff. Had he lived long enough, he undoubtedly would have been promoted to the rank of Chief Inspector.

The motivation behind the villain is a little weak too. The guy just wanted his book back. If people quite running around like freaks and just gave him his damned book, things probably would have gone a lot easier on them. Let’s assume that he DID get his book back and succeed in making himself normal again. Would that really be so bad? He would probably just return to his old tricks and start holding weekly orgies again. And who would begrudge a man THAT? As such, the path this guy seems to take towards finding his book seems kind of strange. If I were a centuries old warlock, I certainly wouldn’t be looking for my prized possession between the ass cheeks of two horny lovers steaming the windows in an old piece of shit Chevy. Maybe I’m just weird, but I would start looking in more obvious places than that.

But don’t let the continuity conundrums bring you down. Night of the Scarecrow is a fun flick that is in immediate need of your attention. I have a copy of it for my home entertainment system. Why don’t you?

Great Lines:

“Back to your grave! ROT in Hell!” --Uncle Thad waving a crucifix in front of the Scarecrow.

“We’ll liquidate that fucking bastard!” --Dillon, upon collecting a jar full of acid.

“How about a little FIRE Scarecrow!” --I already talked about this.

Overall Rating: 7 out of 10 severed heads.

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