scarecrow.
wow.
this is maybe the most awful movie i have ever seen. (and that statement comes from a person who very much enjoys bad movies) the real problem here is that it wasn't so bad it was funny...it's just so bad that it's bad.
scarecrow is the story of a 35 year old high school kid who gets picked on by a bunch of 27 year old high school kids (who inexplicably call him 'scarecrow'). anyway the kid (lester) has a miserable life, is a bad artist, and i'm thinking is mildly retarded.
everyone hates him and makes his life rough except for judy (really the only good thing about the whole movie--and not for her acting ability). lester gets upset and is seen for a brief disconnected moment hitting a scarecrow that looks like a person in a plastic suit, yelling "i whish i was like you so i didn't feel anything." why did he do this? because apparently all the kids in this town hang out in cornfields with scarecrows...who else was he to take his frustration out on?
one night lester's mother's new boyfriend gets mad and kills him in a cornfield right below that same scarecrow. some zappy camera effects occur and lester is reincarnated as the scarecrow. --and i could be wrong here, but the whole killer scarecrow thing seems like it was done before...oh yeah in jeepers creepers 2.
anyway, lester (as the scarecrow) comes to life every once in a while and does acrobatic flips and then kills people. it would make sense that he should kill all the people that wronged him while he was alive, but rather he kills just random characters that have nothing to do with the story.
as a matter of fact, they introduce characters like the gravedigger and his daughter's boyfriend (who have no ties to the story whatsoever) just to be killed.
interestingly enough the really old high school kids all of a sudden are not in high school, the town "has a sinister evil," and somehow these things lead the world's worst sheriff to the conclusion that lester is the scarecrow.
too bad he dies before that could even matter.
unprovoked the scarecrow attacks judy (the only person who was nice to him while he was alive and the only person who went to his funeral), blaming her for his death. there is a short and crappy final fight scene here, taking place on and in a pickup truck that i'm pretty sure isn't actually moving at any point. and then there is a surprise ending that makes even less sense...coming as no surprise at all.
what is really striking about the whole thing is that this film was made completely straight faced.
watch the 'making of' featurette.
the whole cast is talking about effects and acting and plot points as if this movie is to be admired for it's technical prowess. the only thing that makes sense is when the director babbles lloyd kaufmann's name...
now this is by no means up to the caliber of a troma film, but at least i can see where they were going...(how could tiffany shepis be in this movie?) at least troma movies are funny and clever in a sort of tasteless way, this was just miserable.
the acting was terrible, dialog atrocious, editing uber-crappy, effects nearly non-existent....but worst of all this movie was boring. and that is a b-horror movie sin.
i think the icing on the cake though, was the fact that this abomination was dedicated to dario argento, george romero, stephen king, wes craven, and more.
if any of these people ever saw their names at the end of scarecrow, they'd kill themselves just so that they could roll in their graves.
this movie makes roger corman look like alfred hitchcock.
