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Scarecrows (William Wesley 1988) Trash rating +
Written directed and edited by first timer William Wesley, Scarecrows flew under pretty much everyone's radar on its initial release back in 1988. Unsurprisingly Wesley has since made just one other film, the forgettable 2001 horror Route 666 starring Lou Diamond Phillips and Lori Petty. Scarecrows on the other hand has slowly attracted a small but loyal cult following over the years amongst fans of low budget horror. The film has a reputation for having an incredibly tense atmosphere, creepy sense of visual style, and very graphic but sparingly used gore effects. Perhaps most intriguing however is the claim by many that Scarecrows is the best of the (hardly prolific) 'killer scarecrow' horror sub-genre. I'd certainly go along with that, but seen as it's the only 'killer scarecrow' movie I've ever seen then 'that' isn't really saying much.
My first encounter with Scarecrows was on video back in the mid nineties. I vaguely remember being hung over at a friends flat one Sunday afternoon and us renting it out as a double bill with J.S. Cardone's Shadowzone. My memory of the film is equally vague; there wasn't any gore (usually important when you're nineteen years old), and the picture was extremely dark making it hard to see the action. I do remember preferring Shadowzone, but I digress; what I'm pertaining to is that it was almost certainly a censored version of the film. Although never officially trimmed by the BBFC the print submitted to them would most likely have been a pre-cut R rated version. As a result my interest in Scarecrows was only recently reignited after reading of an unrated Region 1 dvd release (shown above) with an excellent (lightened) picture transfer.
Set entirely at night, the film's plot concerns a group of ex-military criminals who, after a robbery, take an aircraft pilot and his daughter hostage forcing him to fly them to Mexico. En route however the gang are double crossed by one of their number who bails out with the money over remote farmland. Forced to give chase the heavily armed bunch land nearby deciding to head through the fields to a deserted farmhouse. Along the way they notice sinister looking scarecrows littering the landscape but casually think nothing of it. Eventually they catch up to the traitor but he seems oddly detached and unconcerned despite their threats of retribution. Only when team members begin to go missing do they speculate on what could be hunting them in such an isolated area...
With such a great premise for an action/horror film, and considering some of the favorable reviews Scarecrows has garnered from horror buffs over the years; I was quite prepared to discount my initial viewing experience and embrace it as a forgotten classic. Unfortunately whilst I enjoyed the movie on a basic aesthetic level, I found the overall execution often painfully dumb (especially the dialogue) and uneventful. This instantly became apparent in the opening fifteen minutes which are taken up entirely by the gang's plane circling over fields looking for their escaped colleague. I just couldn't bring myself to overlook stupid details like them able to spot a man dressed in black from a speeding plane hundreds of feet up in the air...at night! Once the action hit terra firma things picked up slightly, the misty rural setting looked particularly creepy, and the (rarely glimpsed) scarecrows themselves appropriately intimidating. Still, I was left admiring the cool costume design and heavy artillery wondering when the action would eventually kick off. I had a similar impatient feeling when I first saw those huge guns in Aliens, but unlike Cameron's masterpiece Scarecrows only partially delivers on it's premise. Seemingly like Cameron, Wesley was also going for the same savvy mixture of suspense and balls-to-the-wall shoot em' up action; unfortunately it just doesn't work as well with bland stock characters, moderate acting, and an idiotic script that goes nowhere. When the action does finally come half way through it's extremely tense and satisfying with excellent makeup effects, and a real sense of danger. Sadly it's all too fleeting as Wesley settles into familiar stalk and slash territory for the final act, content to let his cast get picked off in all too familiar fashion.
Perhaps I'm being a little hard on a low budget film made twenty years ago with a cast of no name actors. Much of my disappointment no doubt comes as a result of reading such glowing write ups before viewing. To be fair Scarecrows is really rather good when compared with other cheap films of it's type from the period. Plus that sequence mid way through really did knock my socks off, and the scarecrows frankly, looked wicked. It just wasn't enough though. You see I know less is more, that not showing the monster is supposedly more suspenseful, but this is just one of those films that should have broken the rules.
Scarecrows (William Wesley 1988) Trash rating +
Written directed and edited by first timer William Wesley, Scarecrows flew under pretty much everyone's radar on its initial release back in 1988. Unsurprisingly Wesley has since made just one other film, the forgettable 2001 horror Route 666 starring Lou Diamond Phillips and Lori Petty. Scarecrows on the other hand has slowly attracted a small but loyal cult following over the years amongst fans of low budget horror. The film has a reputation for having an incredibly tense atmosphere, creepy sense of visual style, and very graphic but sparingly used gore effects. Perhaps most intriguing however is the claim by many that Scarecrows is the best of the (hardly prolific) 'killer scarecrow' horror sub-genre. I'd certainly go along with that, but seen as it's the only 'killer scarecrow' movie I've ever seen then 'that' isn't really saying much.
My first encounter with Scarecrows was on video back in the mid nineties. I vaguely remember being hung over at a friends flat one Sunday afternoon and us renting it out as a double bill with J.S. Cardone's Shadowzone. My memory of the film is equally vague; there wasn't any gore (usually important when you're nineteen years old), and the picture was extremely dark making it hard to see the action. I do remember preferring Shadowzone, but I digress; what I'm pertaining to is that it was almost certainly a censored version of the film. Although never officially trimmed by the BBFC the print submitted to them would most likely have been a pre-cut R rated version. As a result my interest in Scarecrows was only recently reignited after reading of an unrated Region 1 dvd release (shown above) with an excellent (lightened) picture transfer.
Set entirely at night, the film's plot concerns a group of ex-military criminals who, after a robbery, take an aircraft pilot and his daughter hostage forcing him to fly them to Mexico. En route however the gang are double crossed by one of their number who bails out with the money over remote farmland. Forced to give chase the heavily armed bunch land nearby deciding to head through the fields to a deserted farmhouse. Along the way they notice sinister looking scarecrows littering the landscape but casually think nothing of it. Eventually they catch up to the traitor but he seems oddly detached and unconcerned despite their threats of retribution. Only when team members begin to go missing do they speculate on what could be hunting them in such an isolated area...
With such a great premise for an action/horror film, and considering some of the favorable reviews Scarecrows has garnered from horror buffs over the years; I was quite prepared to discount my initial viewing experience and embrace it as a forgotten classic. Unfortunately whilst I enjoyed the movie on a basic aesthetic level, I found the overall execution often painfully dumb (especially the dialogue) and uneventful. This instantly became apparent in the opening fifteen minutes which are taken up entirely by the gang's plane circling over fields looking for their escaped colleague. I just couldn't bring myself to overlook stupid details like them able to spot a man dressed in black from a speeding plane hundreds of feet up in the air...at night! Once the action hit terra firma things picked up slightly, the misty rural setting looked particularly creepy, and the (rarely glimpsed) scarecrows themselves appropriately intimidating. Still, I was left admiring the cool costume design and heavy artillery wondering when the action would eventually kick off. I had a similar impatient feeling when I first saw those huge guns in Aliens, but unlike Cameron's masterpiece Scarecrows only partially delivers on it's premise. Seemingly like Cameron, Wesley was also going for the same savvy mixture of suspense and balls-to-the-wall shoot em' up action; unfortunately it just doesn't work as well with bland stock characters, moderate acting, and an idiotic script that goes nowhere. When the action does finally come half way through it's extremely tense and satisfying with excellent makeup effects, and a real sense of danger. Sadly it's all too fleeting as Wesley settles into familiar stalk and slash territory for the final act, content to let his cast get picked off in all too familiar fashion.
Perhaps I'm being a little hard on a low budget film made twenty years ago with a cast of no name actors. Much of my disappointment no doubt comes as a result of reading such glowing write ups before viewing. To be fair Scarecrows is really rather good when compared with other cheap films of it's type from the period. Plus that sequence mid way through really did knock my socks off, and the scarecrows frankly, looked wicked. It just wasn't enough though. You see I know less is more, that not showing the monster is supposedly more suspenseful, but this is just one of those films that should have broken the rules.