Night of the Scarecrow

The special effects and make-up are well done. The plot is standard. Characters are really fun, especially the priest. But the main girl and guy were a bit of a bore. As if cast only for their looks (which is usual, but at least look for a bit more, right?) The Scarecrow is funny and entertaining. He could've easily become one of those horror film characters like Leprechaun, or PumkinHead, or Jack Frost. But not exciting enough to become a Jason, or Freddy. Not much to say except i enjoyed it, rather than getting just plain bored.

Claire Goodman (Elizabeth Barondes) returns to her hometown Hanford to visit her estranged father, Major Frank Goodman (Stephen Root), and her family. She befriends the constructor Dillon (John Mese) that works for her father, and invites him to have dinner with her family. Dillon has fired the rebel Danny (John Hawkes) along the day, and during the night, the completely drunken Danny decides to seek revenge and drive a tractor with a friend through the cornfield. However, he stumbles upon a stone and breaks it, unleashing a force that uses the nearby scarecrow as a body. Soon, the scarecrow looks for members of the Goodman family to kill them. Claire and Danny are dating and they lean that one hundred years ago, a warlock promised to turn the useless land into a fertile and productive land. However, he was betrayed by an ancestor of the Goodman family and buried in the cornfield. Now his spirit is seeking revenge and looking for his book of spells to return to the human form.

"Night of the Scarecrow" is a slasher with the storyline of the curse of a family that is hunted down by a scarecrow. The plot is very reasonable, with good performances and special effects. The unknown Elizabeth Barondes performs a strong and great character. My vote is seven.

Title (Brazil): "A Noite do Espantalho" ("The Night of the Scarecrow")

This film is long lost treasure for horror scavengers. Its often labeled as "supernatural horror", but its true strength is in the slashing scenes. The story of the small town with a curse wouldn't be as engaging without the fantastic slasher edge. The kill scenes look like they are straight out of classic Italian horror: amazing gore effects done without computers. The kills are innovative and realistic looking, including some Saw-worthy torture sequences. The plot is hardly original but it turns out to be just sufficient enough. If you somehow combined Maniac, Children of the Corn, and Pumpkinhead into one movie, it would come out something like Night of the Scarecrow.

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.

Night of the Scarecrow (1995)

** (out of 4)

A young woman (Elizabeth Barondes) returns home to learn that her family is about to sell their corn fields so that a mall can take its place. The woman is against this idea and especially after an evil warlock takes control of a scarecrow and starts to kill her family. NIGHT OF THE SCARECROW has a pretty good idea for a movie but the screenplay ends up not doing too much with it and in the end we've pretty much just got your standard slasher film with a few memorable death scenes but nothing else. All of the characters are pretty much bland and that includes the leads who simply never bring much energy to their roles. Most of the supporting players are forgettable as well with the exception of Bruce Glover who plays a preacher with a big mouth. The make up effects for the most part are pretty good and we do get a couple fairly interesting death scenes. A few people are pretty much stitched up or turned into scarecrows and these scenes look very good as does another one where a woman gives birth to one. The look of the scarecrow was quite good so it's a shame more wasn't done for him. The entire subplot about the warlock never really added anything to the picture so a straight revenge tale probably would have been better. Still, horror fans into the scarecrow sub-genre will find the monsters good enough to give it a view but there are certainly better films out there.