Day 30 - Dark Night of the Scarecrow (1981)

I already expressed my enjoyment of killer scarecrow movies back when I reviewed Husk. I wasn't really planning on doing another one for this countdown but then I came across this old made for TV gem broken into pieces on YouTube. You can watch it for yourself here:
Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6, Part 7

In a small town, when a young girl is thought to have been killed by Bubba, a mentally handicapped local man, a group of vigilantes set out to instil their own justice, eye for an eye. When the group finds the man disguised as a scarecrow they shoot him dead, no questions asked. Then the truth comes out that the girl in question is alive, that it was a dog that attacked her, and that the now dead Bubba in fact saved her life. After lying in court that the killing was in self defense, the four murderers get off scot-free. Or so they think. One by one each man begins to see a scarecrow wearing the same clothes as Bubba, and after these sightings each man dies, leaving those still alive in a state of panic. Who is this mysterious person paying back justice for Bubba's death? Or could Bubba still be alive and enacting his revenge? Or worse, could it be his spirit seeking vengeance?

This movie was really just a bit of old, cheesy fun. There isn't anything all that special about it, but at the same time there really isn't anything wrong with it. This film is almost more of a murder mystery thriller than it is a horror movie, particularly since you never see the killer until the very end, but the horror element is still there. Something I did like, that I suppose had to be the case since this was intended for a TV audience, was the way the kills were handled; there is absolutely no gore to this movie. Now don't get me wrong, I do enjoy gore when it's used properly, but it has always seemed to me that 80's horror was always marked by over the top - for the time - kills filled with lots of red-paint-like blood. Personally I'm a bigger fan of the implied gore, where you know something horrific is happening just out of sight, or of those kills that find more inventive and less brutal ways to kill people, which is generally the case in DNotS.

I would generally recommend this to those fans of 80's horror movies or of made for TV movies. Like I said, there really isn't anything special here, but is just a good bit of fun.

Day 31 = Mimic The Director's Cut (1997).