Dark Night of the Scarecrow Movie Review 236

Dark Night of the Scarecrow is a 1981 horror movie directed by Frank De Felitta who was the writer of movies such as Audrey Rose and The Entity. It stars Charles Durning, Tonya Crowe and Larry Drake.

Bubba(Drake) is a mentally slow man who is kind and gentle. He befriends a young girl called Marylee(Crowe) and the locals disapprove of it even though Bubba is not capable of hurting anyone. The leader of the locals is a man called Otis(Durning) who has a posse composed of Skeeter(Robert F.Lyons),Philby(Claude Earl Jones) and Harliss(Lane Smith). When Marylee wanders into someones back yard and gets attacked by a dog, Bubba carries her home to her mother who thinks that Bubba is responsible. Otis starts getting his posse together and they hunt Bubba down . Bubba runs to his  mother and she hides him by dressing him as a scarecrow and putting him in the field. Otis and co go to his mother and demand her to give them Bubba. She won't. They discover him eventually and shoot him dead. Afterwards, they discover that he was innocent after all. They are taken to court but they escape prosecution. Bubba's mother tells them that justice will be done one way or another.

Everything goes back to normal but Marylee looks for Bubba. Nobody tells her what has happened. She starts talking to Bubba as if he was still alive. She visits his mother and she tells her the truth about Bubba's death. One by one the guilty men are killed. They think that it might be Bubba's mother doing it and Otis has a confrontation with her but he kills her. He burns down her house. Then he figures that it might be Marylee as she tells him that she knows he killed Bubba. He thinks that he is safe but Marylee draws him into a field where the spirit of Bubba is waiting for him. He gets his comeuppance and Bubba and Marylee talk, best friends once again....

This was a good horror movie and one of the first, if not the first in the killer scarecrow genre. It was interesting and I really enjoyed it. It is a cut above a lot of the other scarecrow movies I've seen. I would recommend it. It gets a 7/10.