Dark Night of the Scarecrow

 

Developmentally disabled Bubba Ritter spends his afternoons singing songs about colors and constructing floral garlands with his best gal pal Marylee Williams. The innocent friendship between the 36-year-old man-child and his preteen playmate is especially bothersome to postal carrier and closet drunk Otis P. Hazelrigg. When the young Williams girl is mauled by a dog, Hazelrigg mistakenly blames Bubba for her injuries and promptly packs a posse of slack-jawed vigilantes into a pick-up truck so they can swoop down on the Ritter farmhouse with blazing shotguns and baying bloodhounds. Prior to their arrival, Bubba's mother had the foresight to hide her special son in the scarecrow. Her plan backfires when the hounds pick up Bubba's scent, and the Hee-Haw hoodlums pump him with rounds of lead. Hazelrigg inserts a pitchfork into Bubba's hand, and invokes a self-defense scenario that actually works when the four killers have their day in court. Dismayed by the judge's ruling, a heartbroken Mrs. Ritter shrieks the prophetic, "There's other justice in the world beside the law!"  By other justice, Mrs. Ritter is referring to the scarecrow, presumably powered by her dead son, which methodically torments and disposes of Bubba's killers in the most delightful fashions. One man falls into a wood chipper; another suffocates as a silo fills with grain. Hazelrigg helps out in the kill department by inducing a heart attack in Mrs. Ritter and offing the third member of his posse. When Hazelrigg makes a play for the Williams girl in the pumpkin patch of good and evil, the scarecrow shows up and gives him what he's had coming throughout the whole TV movie — the pointed-end of a pitchfork.

INDELIBLE SCENE(S):

• When it comes to playing heavy-set heavies, CHARLES DURNING is the king dick. His portrayal of postman Hazelrigg is so convincingly creepy, I jump each time I see him press his pudgy nose to the window with the paper skull decoration at the church dance
• Death by wood chipper, followed by a shot of a dollop of jelly plopping on Hazelrigg's plate
• The close-up of Bubba's eyes behind the scarecrow mask when he is found hiding