Dark Night of the Scarecrow (1981)

(On TV, March 2020) My reviews can be read like a monologue, but in my mind they’re often a dialogue with an imaginary reader who’s prompting me with “Hey, tell me about this movie…” I can imagine the very short discussion about Dark Night of the Scarecrow in real life: “Well, it’s a 1981 made-for-TV slasher…” “Not interested, goodbye!” Not that you’d be entirely wrong, imaginary reader: by dint of being made for TV, this is a film that pulls a few punches, doesn’t get to indulge into gratuitous gore, and relies on very familiar moral-punishment material for its premise. On the other hand, don’t dismiss it out of hand, because it’s slightly better than its pedigree may imply. No, it won’t win any originality points for a man getting supernatural vengeance over those who killed him—but it’s in the execution that Dark Night of the Scarecrow exceeds expectations. Writer-director J. D. Feigelson can’t rely on the cheap shocks of gore, so his approach is more refined—while the film keeps a slasher structure, it does go for more atmospheric scares, strong rural Halloween imagery, surprisingly effective sequences and an approach that goes for a maximalist execution of a minimalist premise. While not a great horror film, it’s a surprisingly good one and even more surprising that it emerged from made-for-network-TV origins.