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| Images courtesy of VCI Entertainment |
Years
before making a name for himself as a prima executive producer heading 20th
Century Fox and standing behind such horror fare as Audrey Rose and more recently Fire
in the Sky, Joe Wizan and The Entity author
Frank De Felitta paired up with CBS Network television to singlehandedly
jumpstart the scarecrow horror subgenre with their 1981 flick Dark Night of the Scarecrow. Starring eventual Darkman and Dr. Giggles
horror icon Larry Drake, Dog Day
Afternoon and The Muppet Movie
star Charles Durning and Knots Landing star Tonya Crowe, this teleplay by J.D.
Feigelson originally premiered on television on October 24th, 1981
and quickly became one of the highest rated television horror movies of all
time. Broadcast again in 1985, the film
became a Key Video VHS favorite until the 2010s prompted by a first-time
theatrical screening per it’s 30th anniversary at Texas Frightmare
Weekend. Soon afterwards VCI
Entertainment finally released the film on DVD followed by a blu-ray release a
year later.
In Dark Night of the Scarecrow, set in the
Deep South somewhere, our story zeroes in on childlike mentally challenged
Charles Eliot “Bubba” Ritter (Larry Drake) enjoying a gentle natured friendship
with young girl Marylee Williams (Tonya Crowe), much to the chagrin of locals
who perceive Bubba as a dangerous threat.
An angering subject for local postman Otis Hazelrigg (Charles Durning),
the tensions escalate after Marylee suffers a dog bite injury and Otis drags
gas station attendant Skeeter Norris (Robert F. Lyons) and cousins Philiby
(Claude Earl Jones) and Harliss Hocker (Lane Smith) into forming a lynch mob
set to track down and do away with the would be child assailant. In a
last second effort to try and protect Bubba from the mob, his mother hides him
inside a scarecrow posted in a nearby field.
However it proves ineffective as the vigilante mob tracks and guns him
down anyway. Only after he’s already
murdered does the news come back Marylee is fine and in fact Bubba saved her,
forcing the rogue postman Hazelrigg into fumbling with the evidence so it
looked like the killing was an act of self defense.
Months
later, Harliss discovers a scarecrow identical to the one Bubba was hiding in
when he was killed has been planted in his yard, a harbinger of things to come
as Harliss meets a grisly end by falling into his own wood chipper later that
same day. Suspecting foul play somehow
related to Bubba’s death, Hazelrigg first confronts the deceased man’s mother
and then Marylee herself trying to goad an answer out of the girl regarding
Harliss’ death. Not long afterwards, the
scarecrow reappears this time in Philiby’s yard followed by the man’s death,
leading an already paranoid and delusional Hazelrigg into thinking Bubba may in
fact still be alive and is carrying out their murders. However, as the body count continues to rise,
something far more incomprehensible and supernatural seems to be afoot.
Forty
years after the original television premiere and just ten years after finally
making a disc release on home video, the film’s original screenwriter J.D.
Feigelson envisioned a straight-to-video slick 4K digitally photographed sequel
aptly named Dark Night of the Scarecrow 2. Released originally in 2022 prior to this new
4K disc release of both films paired together, Dark Night of the Scarecrow 2 jumps ahead four decades later
following single mother Chris (Amber Wedding) and her young son Jeremy (Aiden
Shurr) moving to Stubblefield County.
Once there, Jeremy becomes involved with a surrogate grandmotherly figure
he calls Aunt Hildie (Carol Dines) and further strikes a bond with a
scarecrow. Somewhere in all of this,
characters start dying off usually in service to some dogged form of poetic
justice.
Whereas
the 1981 television film is still stirring for its moral quandaries, big screen
star power navigating the small screen world and ever punchy horror shocks that
remain startlingly gruesome for their time, the sequel whose only connection to
the original involves the screenwriter J.D. Feigelson whose 2021 4K digital film
frankly looks like a backyard cheapie.
With the 1981 film, shot handsomely in 35mm by frequently television
cinematographer Vincent A. Martinelli (The
Amazing Spider-Man and The Incredible
Hulk) and given an effective modestly sized orchestral score by Amazing Stories composer Glenn Paxton, it
has a polish and patina that gives it a small town regional character. The star power of Charles Durning and
eventual horror legend Larry Drake are nowhere to be found in the 2021 film
which sort of meanders until coming upon an ending of sorts. While the 1981 film was an engrossing and
involving little engine that could, the 2021 iteration is kind of dead on
arrival.
Still,
as someone who was introduced to both of these pictures for the very first time
despite my familiarity with Audrey Rose
and The Entity, the 4K double feature
set Dark Night of the Scarecrows 1 &
2 is absolutely the way to go if you’re looking to add the first film to
your horror film library. Stacked with
plentiful extras spread across two discs alongside several vintage and newly
filmed documentary pieces, MVD Visual and VCI Entertainment’s foray into the 4K
UHD marketplace is thus far on a purely technical level one of the boutique
releasing label’s best products yet. One
of the best television horror movies of the 1980s that seemed to forecast the
emergence of a horror legend and the birthplace of the scarecrow horror
subgenre, the disc comes housed with both features on one 4K so you get the
pointless sequel whether you want it or not.
Despite this, this is nevertheless a terrific release and another
example of VCI Entertainment more than rising to the occasion when it comes to
delivering obscure cult items on 4K UHD disc.
--Andrew Kotwicki
