There’s something enduringly scary about inanimate, humanoid objects that shouldn’t move but probably do under the cover of darkness or when people aren’t watching. Dolls and ventriloquist dummies have certainly served horror auteurs well over the years (hello Child’s Play, Dead of Night, Annabelle). That said, surely scarecrows contain an equal amount of cinematic potential? Staring blankly from their towering posts, adorned in tattered garb, impassively doing their level best to ward off predatory birds on farmsteads throughout the rural Americas and beyond – their motion picture exploitation has nonetheless been decidedly more sparing.
Sure, they trudged back into frame briefly in the solid kid-friendly horror Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark and were fairly brutal in After Dark’s Husk – which can be viewed as a spiritual companion to the film under discussion. Overall though, their usage has been muted, and the average movie-goer would struggle to count on one hand the number of times they’ve made an impact in celluloid. William Wyler’s bold plan for the anything-but-impassive villains in Scarecrows evidently gestated for years in the 1980s before a cast could even be assembled (eventually a band of Floridian thespians was cobbled together) or a crew corralled from the midsts.
What is ‘Scarecrows’ About?
Basically, the high concept premise involves a satanic trio of dead farm owners (the Fowlers, according to one fleeting shot of a letterbox) whose shadow looms large over the property – their evil passed on to the revivified scarecrows that patrol the cornfields. With this simple synopsis as its trampoline, the film manages to spring to life well enough to engage the most jaded of horror fans, even if the springs are riddled with rust.
The context is noteworthy. Filmed in 1985 in Davie, Florida, the movie was made for a relative pittance and endured a litany of problems with casting and budget constraints. Wyler was forced to scratch his way to the finish line and when the intended distributor at the time collapsed, the movie was denied a theatrical release and resigned to a home only release three years after production concluded.
Somewhat miraculously, the movie found an audience within the video market and has been something of a cult movie holy grail to claim for diehards in the years since. The odds were stacked against this flick, yet somehow it manages to work as a fascinating effort despite its narrative vagaries, choppy editing (sometimes what’s left out only elevates interest further) and unspectacular production values. So marred was its production, the fact it became a finished product at all is itself a marvel.
It’s amusing how far a simple, striking idea can go even when financing falls short or production companies go bust – for his film is a genuinely intriguing, if slightly disjointed, curio sure to delight genre enthusiasts. Vastly underrated, Scarecrows is also something of a stake in the sand when it comes to making a case for how limited effects can enhance the imaginative powers and freedom behind a film’s production. In the war between atmosphere and sophisticated visuals, the former certainly wins here!
Murkily lit and weirdly disorienting – the film opens with a group of profane mercenaries seizing control of a cargo plane having made off with $500,000 worth of stolen money. Along for the ride are a father-daughter duo of hostages and a wily turncoat who decides to take the dough for himself and parachute from the aircraft into a mysterious rural expanse below, somewhere near the California/Mexico border. His criminal comrades, naturally incensed, decide to pursue the traitor and reclaim the loot they want to spread among themselves.
The Atmosphere Lends Itself to the Story
The rural setting lends an eerie bucolic horror (a label reserved for flicks like Children of the Corn) air to proceedings once everyone is aground, and the dilapidated farmhouse makes a creepy first appearance. Atmosphere quickly becomes central to the film’s success, and it is achieved via lingering shots of lonely windmills, the mummified look to the scarecrows and a simple, plinking score which seems to mirror the slowly unfurling schemes of the tormentors in the fields.
Scarecrows gets quite strange quickly, and its obscurity is a testament to the low ceiling the crew had to work with in telling the story at hand. The dialogue sounds like it’s been extracted from a pulp novel as the characters spit insults and note the “ugly vibes” of their rustic setting, while continuing their pursuit of Burke (the double-crosser). The editing is choppy, and the same images are used over and over again as a way to half-explain what’s going on.
Scarecrows gets quite strange quickly, and its obscurity is a testament to the low ceiling the crew had to work with in telling the story at hand. The dialogue sounds like it’s been extracted from a pulp novel as the characters spit insults and note the “ugly vibes” of their rustic setting, while continuing their pursuit of Burke (the double-crosser). The editing is choppy, and the same images are used over and over again as a way to half-explain what’s going on.
A single black and white photo suggests the house’s previous residents dabbled in some kind of devilry, but the details are omitted. What’s dished up is a series of evidently uncanny plot points that aren’t ever made expressly clear in the end result. It’s a marvel that the film works – both as a love letter to horror in general as well as a man vs marauder hunt not entirely dissimilar to Predator.
References to Other Horror Films
The fun factor is immediate in spite of its shortcomings, as Wyler’s film literariness is obvious. Operating on a threadbare budget and, as mentioned, forced to employ practical effects over anything remotely sophisticated, there’s a reason his movie has struck a chord with horror hounds. The decisions he makes (or was forced to make) only elevate the weird mood fostered from the beginning. The title sequence (orange lettering on black background) is heavily reminiscent of John Carpenter, as is the POV shot of a possessed Burke approaching the house.
The taxidermied crow in one of the rooms of the house is surely a Psycho nod (and played off as further vague evidence to witchcraft). The stabs at gallows humor evoke massive Evil Dead vibes (Burke’s dismembered head, filled with straw, begins taunting one of the soldiers from behind the closed door of a fridge). Horror movie fans often delight in being reminded of the classics and for an aficionado, this kind of movie erudition offsets some of the movie’s holes. In short, the filmmakers realized an unnerving atmosphere could be created with limited resources.