cinema history class: dark night of the scarecrow

Session: TV Terrors, Week 4
Movie: Dark Night of the Scarecrow (1981)
Directed by Frank De Felitta

As always, there may be spoilers here. And the trailer may be NSFW and/or NSFL.

Plot:
A little girl is apparently killed, and a group of vigilantes hunt down and execute the mentally challenged man whom they assume is responsible. Horror ensues.

Reaction and Other Folderol:

One of the things I really liked about this movie was that it presented an odd little inversion of something I really like. I have mentioned from time to time that I don't like my heroes to be too heroic. Part of why I enjoy spaghetti westerns is that, unlike American westerns that have good guys and bad guys, they have bad guys and worse guys. And the TV shows that I have really enjoyed streaming in recent years -- Boardwalk Empire, House of Cards, and The Americans among them -- have all featured severely-flawed protagonists. Dark Night of the Scarecrow doesn't really have any heroes, but it does have a quartet of antagonists. And if you try hard enough you can kind of come around to seeing them -- or three of them, I guess -- as having noble intentions. Sort of. Maybe. The fourth one, Otis Hazelrigg played by Charles Durning, is kind of the ringleader of the vigilantes, and doesn't really have the same flimsy claim to goodness.

Larry Drake is brilliant as the mentally challenged victim, and one almost wishes that we could see more of him, but that's really not possible since it's his murder that sets the events of the film in motion.

A lot of the movie had an odd Twilight Zone quality to it. This is especially true in the climactic scene where Hazelrigg is chased to his death by a tractor. That reminded me very much of "You Drive," an episode of TZ, in which a hit-and-run driver is chased down by his car. As an aside, it also reminded me of Duel because of the way the tractor is made to appear like an animal.

But the Twilight Zone comparison is particularly compelling for me. There were many episodes of TZ in which magic is happening without any real explanation. We, the viewer, are expected to accept it. That's the way it was with Dark Night. There's really no explanation given for the supernatural elements. We just accept it.

As a bonus, Joe brought in "Road Hog," a 1959 episode of Alfred Hitchcock Presents. Joe's reason was the similarity of the plot to that of Duel, which we saw two weeks earlier. I won't go into detail about it. Suffice to say it was entertaining, and served as a fun capper to the evening.

Ratings

Me: 10 (and 9 for "Road Hog")

Bob: 9.8 (and 9.5 for "Road Hog")

Christina: 9.9 (and 3 out of 4 for "Road Hog")
Joe: 10 (and 10 for "Road Hog")