Dark Night of the Scarecrow ***

 I have a lot of content on Frank De Felitta's Dark Night of the Scarecrow (1981) on the blog...for a reason. This is my favorite made-for-television horror film. And the 70s had some really great ones. But this film is so really my jam...always will be. The story is just so made for this horror genre. I actually found this on Tubi TV while looking for another horror film. It came up on Search, and I was all about revisiting this on a late Saturday night. The use of Piru, California, as a location was perfect because you could live in the Midwest or the Southeast and feel this film. And the pumpkin patch farms, the feed and pigs, the open landscapes, the barns, various rural houses, hick town where a mob can shoot a child-minded innocent man who actually saved a little girl from a dog attack via execution 21 times and still celebrate the murderers once they get off on "lack of probable cause"; all of this really sets such a tone for the film. What was really cool is that I found old TBS clips (and even CBS clips) introducing the film back in the late 80s. When I first caught this film on a VHS tape I had borrowed from a relative, stumbled on it by accident while fast-forwarding through a Braves baseball game, it was recorded off TBS. And how neat is it to stumble on such an atmospheric film, with such a spooky story of a straw-filled scarecrow seemingly housing the spirit of Bubba, getting revenge on Durning, F Lyons, Earl Jones, and Lane Smith for his needless demise.

The execution with Bubba trapped remains potent

Durning as the vile postman who is never shown out of uniform

Bubba didn't want the girl to trespass

The most memorable scene from Saturday late night was Claude Earl Jones spotting the scarecrow a distant from his feed factory, leaning down at it on bended knee, clutching his chest, all that guilt for his part in a crime surfacing. With Lane Smith also seeing the scarecrow, Durning must try to keep them from losing control. Durning cares about his reputation in town, maintaining his job as the town postman, looking to take whatever measures were necessary to conceal their crime from everyone besides the DA and Bubba's mother (and, also, the little girl). And the clearly yucky pedophilia evident with Durning towards the little girl that was Bubba's best friend just remains so ick. Durning even using a shovel to keep a member of his mob from blabbing to the police and suffocating a rival in her home, fixing it to where the house would explode through fumes from a stove sparked by flames from the fireplace to prove he'll succumb to the lowest depths in order to protect his precious reputation. Ultimately, he won't be able to run from Bubba. That pitchfork Durning uses as plant on Drake's Bubba coming back to haunt him is some sweet, sweet irony.