When I was a little tyke I didn’t know the difference between an R-rated horror film and a PG-rated film, and neither did my mother I guess, because I watched them all. Something Wicked This Way Comes was as captivating and horrifying to me at 7 or 8 as was Mother’s Day when I secretly discovered it at 10 or 12. When I became an adult, I spent way too much of my time searching for these films that were forever etched in my brain. Armed with nothing but my memories, I bought and rented numerous amounts of horror tapes in hopes to rediscover my “childhood classics.” To my surprise some of the films I remember as being tame were not so tame, involving rape, unthinkable violence and other situations a kid my age probably should have never been watching in the first place. One of the films that left an everlasting impression on me was Dark Night of the Scarecrow, but unlike the aforementioned films it was made for TV and involved no gratuitous gore or nudity. That, however, made it no less terrifying.
There are three vivid images from my youth that I always remember scared the piss out of me. First were Freddy Krueger’s overstretched arms in the alleyway as he chased Nancy in A Nightmare on Elm Street. Second (a scene that still bothers me today) is little Jason coming out of the water at the end of Friday the 13th, and third is the scarecrow from Dark Night. Bubba’s terrified eyes peering out from behind that scarecrow mask while he awaits his execution at the hands of Otis Hazelrigg and three local bumpkins has stuck with me a for long time and will never go away.
I just have to say it: “They just don’t make them like Dark Night of the Scarecrow these days,” and current horror filmmakers should take notice of how it was done. The simple tight story, minus the hokey twist ending, makes you forget that most of the violence is off the screen. Dark Night sucks you in and doesn’t let you go until the bitter end, and Charles Durning (Hazelrigg) portrays one of the best human monsters pre-Hannibal, and he doesn’t need to cannibalize one corpse to pull it off.
Dark Night may be a tale of scarecrow revenge, but it is the human characters that are the villains in the film. Hazelrigg’s prejudice and suggested attraction to a young Marylee Williams leads to the wrongful death of the simple minded Bubba, a grown man as gentle as a child. After a dog mauls Marylee, Hazelrigg mistakenly accuses Bubba of the act, and leads a pack of vigilantes in gunning him down while he is disguised as a scarecrow, which was a plan devised by his mother to keep him safe from the vengeance driven mob. When the men involved get acquitted of murder charges, they soon begin to die one by one. Fingers are pointed, and the double-crossing begins as soon as Hazelrigg realizes someone is really coming after him, and he stops at nothing to save his hide, even going so far as to blame the innocent little Marylee for all of his friends’ mysterious deaths. The enjoyment of watching Dark Night is watching Hazelrigg unravel as he is haunted by nothing but a harmless scarecrow that always seems to inexplicably appear before someone suffers a fatal accident. Has Hazelrigg lost his mind, or is Bubba’s spirit really back for revenge? Or do the murders have a more rational explanation, like a loving mother who decided to take the law into her own hands? Either way a lot of people are going to die until the truth is uncovered.
The younger generation of horror fans, who my generation has taught about films like Last House on the Left, and joined us as we cheered on Eli Roth’s and Rob Zombie’s violent movies may be left scratching their heads as to why we talk about Dark Night of the Scarecrow with such high praise. Unlike what we are usually accused of, we do not always choose T&A and buckets of blood over atmosphere and suspense. Believe it or not the teens of the 80’s and 90’s are able to use their imaginations. We did not grow up with porn right at our fingertips, we had to sneak our father’s Playboys and a softcore film on Skinemax every so often. We also did not have IMDB.com to tell us what was a pre-approved horror “classic” so we had to watch things and come up with our own opinions. And unlike the A-D-D riddled youth of today we actually watched movies instead of texting our friends. The other elements besides babes and boobs that make a good horror film were not lost on us, and perhaps this is why we can enjoy a film like Scarecrow along side a film like The Prowler. We’re also a lot less closed-minded than the generation of horror fans who still will not let go of Vincent Price and Lon Cheney. Great horror movies of all types are not lost on us and a lot of die-hard horror fans in their 30s enjoy the genre because of the many sub-genres it embodies. Horror offers so many options and is able to branch out into so many other genres that the possibilities seem endless, and we seem to enjoy them all.
Dark Night of the Scarecrow proves that not all horror films need to be a hard R, but that still doesn’t mean anyone can make a great PG rated horror flick. It is much harder to pull off a horror film without over the top special effects, cheap scares, and of course gore. The writing, acting, and directing all have to be done right, combined with the perfect mix of elements, such as pacing and atmosphere. Dark Night of the Scarecrow is one of the few films from the 80s that pulled it off and is a movie that all horror fans should be able to enjoy, even the newer generation.
Be sure and check out Kindertrauma’s ‘Top Nice Mommies of Horror’
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