31 Nights of Horror Dark Night of the Scarecrow

Platform: Peacock

Director: Frank De Felitta

Release Year: 1981

Watch Date: October 24, 2023

My Rating: 8.4

People are the worst. Always blaming people who are different for things they didn’t do. Poor Bubba. The movie starts with Bubba, a mentally slow individual, playing in a field with the little Williams girl, Marylee. The creepy mailman is watching them through binoculars and complains to the next person on his route. They talk about how something needs to be done about Bubba but that he needs to do something to a kid first. So, of course, as Bubba and the girl are walking home, she trespasses in a backyard to look at some gnomes and is attacked and killed by the dog that lives there.

Four men from the town go after Bubba. His mama hides him in the field by dressing him up like the scarecrow and tying him to the scarecrow post. The men find him and shoot him (21 bullet holes). Right after shooting him, they hear on the radio that Marylee is alive and Bubba saved her life. The vigilantes go to trial and say that Bubba attached them with a pitchfork. The judge determines that there isn’t sufficient evidence to go to trial. The men celebrate. Marylee sneaks out of her house to play with Bubba and learns from his Mama that he is dead.

One by one, the men start seeing a scarecrow in their field, and then they are killed. One is chopped up in his hay cutter (wood chipper-like thing for hay). The mailman tries to talk to Marylee and learns she is talking to dead Bubba. The mailman attacks Bubba’s mama and kills her accidentally (that’s what happens when you make it so someone can’t breathe). On his way out of her house, he turns the gas from the stove on so it will look like that is how she died when the gas hits the fire and the house explodes (such a coward).

Man number two (who runs the grain mill) is locked in a silo and buried alive in corn. The mechanic is actually killed by the mailman, who is afraid he will talk. They dug up Bubba’s grave. After the mechanic closes the lid, the mailman hits him over the head with a shovel and buries him with Bubba. He’s become quite the killer mailman. Oy. On his way back from burying the mechanic, he almost runs over Marylee. His headlights were awfully dim, and he was drinking. She runs off.

The mailman chases Marylee to a field, where she hides in a piece of machinery. When he finds her, she takes off again. The machinery starts up and begins to chase the mailman. He ends up running into the scarecrow’s pitchfork and dies. The movie ends with the Scarecrow, who is Bubba’s ghost, giving Marylee a flower and they go off to play.

The characters were annoying, but this flick was pretty good. The script and casting were well done. While the basic plot line was unoriginal, i.e. people harass and cause the death of someone different and end up being hunted and dying, the premise was original. I really appreciated that. I would definitely watch this movie again.

Sidenote: My favorite thing about this movie was the commercial breaks. It must have been made for TV.

Photo Credit: imdb.com