Dark Night of the Scarecrow 2 is brought to you by J.D. Feigelson, who wrote the original Dark Night of the Scarecrow. This time he not only penned the script but produced and directed this yarn. The result is a good concept with a bad delivery. DNotS 2 falls painfully short of the original and seems as if it would have been better off in the hands of someone else. Perhaps Larry Blamire (Lost Skeleton of Cadavra) could have (intentionally) funnied up the script and camera work.
Buy Dark Night of the Scarecrow 2 Blu-rayChris (Amber Wedding), a single mother in the witness protection program, relocates to the small town of Stubblefield with her son, Jeremy (Aiden Shurr), where they encounter a resurrected entity from the past. The spectral being takes the form of a scarecrow that, aside from stalking Chris and Jeremy, runs amok and kills not-so-respectable town folks. The scarecrow isn’t all bad though. It does have a connection to Jeremy and manages to save his mother Chris, when the bad man she’s running from finds her. Jeremy’s connection to the scarecrow was somehow brought about by Aunt HIldie (Carol Dines), who’s been watching Jeremy after school and is also the aunt of one Bubba Ritter. Bubba was the young man who was falsely accused of a crime and murdered by a vigilante mob 40 years ago. Why is this menacing scarecrow terrorizing this woman and her son and killing townsfolk? What other secrets from the past is the town hiding? Why didn’t this script remain tucked away in a desk drawer and forgotten about?
DNotS 2 is essentially lots of blather and not enough splatter…or atmosphere. The original, a great made-for-TV movie featuring Larry Drake as Bubba and written by Feigelson, is not a slasher by any means but it has a dark, eerie, supernatural atmosphere throughout. DNotS 2 tries to add the slasher element but strikes out as its too few kills are as unmemorable as the cast performances.
DNotS 2 is clearly an attempt at launching a franchise around the scarecrow named Straweyes. That’s even the movie’s subtitle, “Straweyes.” The scarecrow costume and effects are actually quite creepy and well done. One can imagine with a budget and further development this idea for a franchise could have had a chance but as it stands its a total miss. I’m not sure even diehard DNotS fans would watch this more than once. Feigelson manages to use a handful of nifty long shots and silhouettes against the horizon but not even those glimmers of good cinematography can save this dud.
DNotS 2 is completely missing the creepy atmosphere that made the original an outstanding made-for-TV movie that still haunts those that watched it in the 1980s. Its only real connection to the first movie is Bubba Ritter’s grave and a strange aunt that visits it. DNotS 2 closes with a nod to Iron Eyes Cody as Straweyes sheds a single tear from its cut-out, burlap-sack eye hole. A decent scene that’s also the best part of the movie (aside from the Blu-ray’s trailers of other movies) and not only because it signals the end of this 82-minute stinker. Though hokey, that ending along with the scarecrow costume only solidifies my belief that in more competent hands DNotS 2 could have potentially been a solid horror or comic outing.
