Films That Witness Madness

review

SCARECROWS

William Wesley's 1988 horror flick SCARECROWS is all cheese. It has that Full Moon vibe to it, a low-rent, low-thrills piece of shit that, fortunately, still manages a decent amount of charm. It's the kind of film I watched a lot of back in the day, a time when my standards were so low that virtually anything on the horror shelves of my local video store was a good time. To call SCARECROWS a "good horror film" would be incorrect. It suffers from start and stop pacing, major lapses in logic, some truly awful dialog, performances that are barely there and mediocre direction all the way to the end. But to call it an "entertaining horror film" would be spot on. SCARECROWS strives for and ultimately reaches the promised land of the cult classic.

A couple of ex-military men (and one woman) rob the Camp Pendleton Military Base of three million dollars. Taking a pilot and his daughter hostage, they force them to fly to Mexico. One of the robbers, Bert, has other plans. He straps on a parachute, tosses a grenade and jumps out of the plane with the dough. Thankfully for everybody on board, this is one of those grenades takes about three minutes to explode and they're able to toss it before the plane goes boom. Very unhappy, the rest of the crew sets off, guns in hand, to find Bert and reclaim the money. Despite jumping out of the plane when it was only flying about two miles off the ground, Bert survives just fine. Problem is, he lost the money. As his ex-mates taunt him over his headset, Bert sets out to reclaim the loot only to get himself killed by a bunch of evil scarecrows.

When the search for Bert fails, the remaining robbers - with the pilot's daughter in tow - hold up in an abandoned farmhouse. Then out pops Bert, looking a bit wobbly - understandably, as he was gutted not too long ago. The guys take turns smacking the high holy shit out of him before Bert suddenly turns the tables, delivering four tons of ass-whooping before having his head cut off. Examining the corpse, our robbers find something strange. Bert has been hollowed out and stuffed full of straw and - GASP!!! - the money! Well, this would be enough to make R. Lee Ermey shit his britches and run for the plane but not these guys. In fact, they don't seem the least bit concerned about the situation. They quickly scramble to find the rest of the money, trouncing through the bush to find every last dollar. Even after another one of their group gets slaughtered and the full weight of the situation is brought to light, these jackasses STILL go after the money. So, as it goes so often, one by one our dipshit protagonists get knocked off by evil scarecrows - or, as they're called by one of the characters, "demonic demons" - until only the pilot's daughter is left alive to see the next day. Roll credits.

SCARECROWS is a laughable film. Almost everything about it is half-assed and poorly executed. The only saving grace is the films special effects. The evil, murderous scarecrows are wicked creations. They reminded me a bit of Ossorio's undead Templars in a way. It's a shame they aren't given more screen time. They mostly appear hanging on crosses or in extreme close-up, effectively killing their creep factor. The way Wesley uses them, however, is almost brilliant. We're never really given an explanation for why they're there or what they may or may not be guarding but Wesley doesn't seem to find that at all important. He leaves that a total mystery. That's probably for the best. I kept expecting someone to stumble upon an old, magical tome or for someone to make mention of black magic but thankfully that didn't happen. That would have cheapened the film even more and I don't think SCARECROWS could have withstood another ridiculous plot development. As it is, a bunch of walking scarecrows that behave like zombies - infecting their prey and bringing them back to life after harvesting their body parts - is enough inanity for one film.

So why the hell did I enjoy the film so much? Damned if I know. It has that kind of video store appeal to it - genre fans who spent more time renting movies then doing homework in the late Eighties and early Nineties will know what I'm talking about - and an off-the-cuff execution that makes the whole thing downright likeable. No matter how insanely stupid the film gets, it doesn't drag and it doesn't overstay its welcome. For connoisseurs of bad cinema, this is a pleasant way to spend a few hours. For everyone else, the excitement might be short lived. While I would normally fall into the latter category, I found myself having a blast. It wasn't the characters -though Victoria Christian (see above) is kind of a fox - or the narrative, exactly. It was, more or less, that pleasant, comfortable feeling of nostalgia that did it. And, for once, I'm perfectly comfortable saying that.

Recommended.

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