Night of the Scarecrow (1995)
- Andrew Smith
- Jul 26
- 5 min read
"A terrifying evil is about to be unleashed"
Plot
A group of teenagers accidentally release the spirit of an evil warlock who possesses a scarecrow in order to murder the descendants of those in the town who killed him many centuries earlier.
Review
Not to be confused with Dark Night of the Scarecrow from 1981, Night of the Scarecrow is a solid if limited slasher which seeks to utilise one of horror's most underused gimmicks - that of an evil scarecrow. Come on, you've never thought that the scarecrow from The Wizard of Oz wasn't just a tiny bit unsettling? Scarecrows tap into this very primal fear of the inanimate mocking the animate. They’re objects shaped like a human, meant to simulate human presence, but they’re entirely hollow. You'd assume horror cinema would have completely exhausted that specific brand of terror by now, but historically the ‘killer scarecrow’ idea has barely scratched the surface of that potential. Dark Night of the Scarecrow and the cult hit Scarecrows aside, there wasn’t much else when Night of the Scarecrow came along in 1995 so there was plenty of gold waiting to be mined here.
Despite the presence of some supernatural elements, this is a straight-up slasher with a killer scarecrow. The old ‘once you've seen one, you've seen them all’ slasher mantra is in full effect here. Characters live up to stereotype. The situations and settings are overly familiar. The plot unwinds exactly as it should do. Within even a hint of attempting something a little different, Night of the Scarecrow plays it all safe......a little too safe. Director Jeff Burr has made plenty of low budget horror sequels including a couple of Puppet Master sequels and an instalment of the Pumpkinhead series. He knew his way around a horror film even if the direction was pedestrian and very workman like. A reliable, safe pair of hands could churn out some low budget horror film like this in his sleep and still provide a decent effort. And with Night of the Scarecrow, there’s something just satisfying watching an old school slasher like this right before the self-aware meta horrors of Scream and its copycats began to emerge the year after. Even though this was released in 1995, it has the feel of something a decade earlier.
Night of the Scarecrow does look good for its obvious shoestring budget and production values are high. The film's visual execution has a decidedly Gothic, sometimes autumnal approach, where you know the Halloween period is fast approaching with the darker nights and lush colours of the trees. The cinematographer Tom Callaway delivers incredibly slick photography. He utilizes shadows, fog, and the natural menace of the setting to create a mood that carries the film, even when the script feels overly familiar. At least this one has the foresight to include a cornfield during a rousing set piece. Too many scarecrow themed horrors shy away from living up to scarecrow stereotyping but why not? Cornfields are rather eerie, menacing places and a scarecrow without a cornfield is like a king without a castle.
The ultimate problem with Night of the Scarecrow isn't just the repetitive nature of the slasher approach - it's in the title character. Many slashers in the past have looked like they were going to bomb, only to be saved by the presence of a unique-looking killer. Not here unfortunately. He looks really cheesy - your stereotypical killer with a flour sack over his head (think Jason in Friday the 13th Part 2). I wonder why they couldn't have taken a leaf out of the book of Scarecrows and made the scarecrow look authentic and frightening, keeping him quiet as a silent killer. This guy just isn't scary in the slightest and looks and sounds like a high school jock dressed up as a scarecrow and pranking people on Halloween. At one point towards the end, I was dying for him to remove his mask and unveil his true identity in a Scooby Doo-like plot twist. It’s another example of a low budget slasher film desperately trying to create the next Freddy Krueger by having them talk too much, cracking puns and one-liners and antagonising their victims before killing them. Less is more; keep them silent and brooding to let audiences’ imagination do the hard work.
A slasher can sometimes claw its way back to respectability if it delivers on its set pieces – the kills. Night of the Scarecrow boasts a very respectable body count of ten, but what stands out isn't the volume of the kills, but the methodology as the death scenes rely on a little more than old fashioned blood and gore but some special effects (the killer is a warlock after all!). Victims are fed into farm machinery where they’re used as thresher fodder, there’s a highly frenetic assault on a couple of teenagers trapped in the back of a van and, a deeply surreal moment where a character spontaneously sprouts thick stalks of straw directly out of their own eyes. In the film’s best moment, the scarecrow, having confronted the local priest, pulls out a sewing kit and literally sews his mouth shut, mirroring his own deformed face. It's completely bizarre body horror, but it brilliantly keeps this scarecrow theme tied to the violence.
The cast is full of the ‘I know the face but not the name’ actors who all fill the various stock character roles. There's the local priest, the town mayor, the farmer, the sheriff, etc. It's a bit uncanny how they're all supposed to be members of the same family. Talk about keeping it in the family, it'd be hard to break into their grip on power in this community. Elizabeth Barondes looks great and injects some life into her character. Matters are not harmed by her inevitable T&A scene but she's feisty enough through the rest of the film to make a likeable heroine, going against type by flashing the flesh and becoming the heroine. Unfortunately, she has zero chemistry with her male counterpart, John Mese. The rest of the cast are rounded out by a great bunch of characters actors including Stephen Root and Bruce Glover. Glover enjoys a good role as the local priest who ‘enjoys’ the scene with his mouth being sewn-up. He understands exactly what kind of film he's in and just chews the scenery beautifully whenever he’s on screen. Hammer horror starlet Martine Beswick also makes an appearance to keep the film’s horror pedigree high. John Hawkes would go on to have a great supporting role in the quality TV western series Deadwood.
Final Verdict
If you want a decent horror film about killer scarecrows then check out Scarecrows, which is creepy and gory. If you can't get hold of that then this will have to do. Not a great slasher film by any means but you can do a lot worse than Night of the Scarecrow. It’s competent, does what it sets out to do with minimal fuss and, as a straightforward slice of 90s horror, it unapologetically wears its influences on its sleeve right before the sub-genre became obsessed with deconstructing itself.
 |
Night of the Scarecrow Director(s): Jeff Burr Writer(s): Reed Steiner, Dan Mazur Actor(s): Elizabeth Barondes, John Mese, Stephen Root, Bruce Glover, Dirk Blocker, Howard Swain, Gary Lockwood, John Hawkes Duration: 85 mins |  |
|---|
