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Title: Scarecrows (1988) Post by: Chadzilla on March 09, 2001, 03:17:44 PM I just saw (at fangoria2000.com) that William Wesley, the man behind this little creepy sleeper, is finally making another movie! I hope for the best because Scarecrows scared the crap out of me when I first saw it back when it made its debut in 1988.
Scarecrows is the b-movie fans dream. After renting a string of skull or one slime movies you rent this little thing you've never heard of, hoping it may be good for at least a laugh or two, and, shock of shocks, it turns out to be a well crafted horror movie with decent acting, strong, genre savy direction, and an actual script that carefully thought out all of its plot points BEFORE filming! I had to watch it again immediately after it finished to make sure that I had not been hallucinating the whole thing. I wasn't. Plot: A group of thugs rob some military base and hijack a plane. Having no honor among thieves, one of the group leaps from the plane with the dough, after leaving a hand grenade behind to get rid of his now useless partners and the hostages. The attempt fails and the p**sed off robbers come a running after him, landing the plane in a nearby field. Meanwhile the double crossing thug awakens to find his parachute tangled in a tree in the middle of a field filled with...scarecrows. I will now politely shut up and sit down and let you all discover just what nasty spirits these unwitting souls stir up in this scarecrow filled field out somewhere in the middle of nowhere in the dead of night. The biggest thing that immediately announced that this was going to be a quality movie was the score. It was orchestral, NOT electronic, as was the case with most eighties movies. You do not know just how refreshing that sounded to these Tangerine Dream fatigued ears. Another thing was Wesley's use of atmosphere and character to build tension, and deliberately under used gore effects makes the viewer writhe in empathetic pain (get the unrated version, skip the unapproved R-rated cut - which the director admits is unwatchable because the violence was deleted by the producers with no attempts to keep the sequences coherent). Home run scene: The part where one guy tries to convince both himself and his cohorts that what is happening isn't really real because their all dead and they can't really be here at all. It is a great slow burn into babbling madness that makes you wonder why no one in this movie ever made it to Hollywood. SEE THIS MOVIE! Title: Re: Scarecrows (1988) Post by: Warren H. on March 09, 2001, 05:38:09 PM Are you INSANE? Scarecrows is one of those rare movies that manages to do EVERYTHING wrong. The characters, the plot, the direction, all are bad. That's all fine and dandy, but the movie is boring. Worse, it p**sed me off it was so boring and bad. Aieeeee! I can't even stand to think about it! My mind!
Title: Re: Scarecrows (1988) Post by: Fritz on March 09, 2001, 08:48:22 PM I came across this classic after buying NIGHTMARE VACATION 2 (Sleepaway camp 2) and found it in the video case instead.
Title: Re: Scarecrows (1988) Post by: Andrew on March 13, 2001, 08:45:36 PM I have mixed feelings about this film. On one hand, they never explain the reason the scarecrows are - they just are! On the other hand, I found my attention wandering during the slow parts.
Still, not entirely without merit. Andrew |