Castle Vanian Halloween Special: Scary Scarecrows: Dark Night of the Scarecrow (1981)

We both decided that this would our top movie without any discussion. Why?

Dark Night of the Scarecrow (1981) is still the best scarecrow film out there, even after all the ones we’ve watched in the last month. It’s a clever movie, partly because it doesn’t overextend itself. It’s an onion film because there are layers and it’s nasty. Even though it was made for TV, the layers are quite vicious. There’s so much hate and there’s paedophilia, which is a hard topic, especially for television.

Bubba, the incredible Larry Drake, is just this poor, simple guy who wants to hang out with his best friend. Hazelrigg (Charles Durning) is jealous of Bubba’s relationship with the little girl, Marylee (Tonya Crowe,) because he wants her. It becomes obvious quite quickly that there’s desire there.

You can see the glee when Bubba finally does it, when he supposedly kills the girl and they can finally hunt him down.

What did you think of the casting?

The movie wouldn’t have worked if there hadn’t been such a great cast. Every role is acted quite superbly.

Larry Drake is a tremendous actor and really sold Bubba. It all centred around him. If he couldn’t have pulled that off, none of the others would have mattered.

You’ve also got Marlon Brando’s sister, Jocelyn, in it – which doesn’t mean that she’s any good, but she is. I like it when she says, “There are other forms of justice in this world.” You know that her son’s killers are going to get it.

Charles Durning was such a brilliant actor. His character was so spiteful. He gets away with it all, too... right up until the end.

The cleverest thing is that you don’t see the scarecrow move until the very end. You don’t know if it’s real or not. You see it in the field, but you never hear it. You don’t see it until it goes over and takes the girl’s hand.

What about the production quality?

It’s wild that Dark Night of the Scarecrow was made for TV but has a better production value than half the scarecrow movies we’ve seen that had cinema releases. That’s what I mean, if it’s written well and directed well and acted well, you can beat them all.

Did you have a favourite moment?

Yes, the moment the radio goes right after they execute Bubba. When they realize Bubba’s a hero. When you see things like that, you kind of wish things like this were real… you wish evil spirits could inhabit objects to dish out the justice that no one else will. That the well protected “pillars” of the community won’t get away with it anymore.

Any final thoughts?

It’s such an innocent film, really. Marylee is innocent all the way through. Mrs. Ritter knows what Hazelrigg is like, but it’s kept relatively quiet otherwise. There’s that undercurrent that things aren’t right, but it’s not particularly gory.

I really loved Mrs. Ritter, especially when she’s like “You ain’t the law.” She won’t let them in and isn’t intimidated by them. Like I said, when she tells Hazelrigg she knows how he looks at Marylee.

God, at that time, I had never even heard the word “paedophile,” so to tackle that topic… people didn’t talk about that! Now, we’re learning that they’ve been there the whole time and worse, they’ve been protected. I can’t think of anything else that was more taboo. What a horrible, horrible thought. And the worst part is that he’s such a well-respected man. Everyone loves Hazelrigg. He finally gets his comeuppance at the end – but it could have been a lot nastier for me. I mean, he even killed his one mate to cover his own ass. Yeah, he definitely should have gotten it worse.