Census Bloodbath: Rural Furor

Year: 1981
Director: Frank De Felitta
Cast: Charles Durning, Robert F. Lyons, Claude Earl Jones
Run Time: 1 hour 35 minutes
MPAA Rating: N/A

Canadian slasher movies are better. It's just true. Sure, our polite Northern friends can churn out crap just like the rest of us (here's looking at you, Humongous), but their hack 'n slash pics ineffably, inevitably turn out more engaging and fun than their American counterparts. Consider Terror Train over New Year's Evil, or My Bloody Valentine over any other film ever released. Even their direct to video cash-ins like Prom Night IV: Deliver Us From Evil have their measure of charm.

But in October 1981, the Canadian slasher complex would face its biggest challenge yet: the television movie. TV movies are generally notorious for their crouton-sized budgets, their community theater performances, and their noxious Hallmark plotting, but a TV slasher flick? Without blood and guts or boobs and butts? Removing the slasher from its raison d'être is genre suicide.

Enter Canada.

1981's Dark Night of the Scarecrow is a unique film for many reasons, but the fact that it's pretty darn good is not the least of them. Thanks to the restrictions and limitations of television the filmmakers were forced to get creative, and the product is an off-model slasher with a chilling EC Comics-esque premise and a good deal of suspense. Sure, there's no drippings or strippings, a small body count, and no traditional Final Girl, but for that reason its success is all the more remarkable.

You don't need Karo syrup to find this scarecrow creepy as hell.

In classic Canadian slasher tradition, Dark Night of the Scarecrow is set as far from the Yukon as humanly possible, this time the American South. One day, the wicked and corrupt postman Otis Hazelrigg (Charles Durning) spots an opportunity to enact his violent fantasies on the mentally challenged Bubba Ritter (Larry Drake, who would later fill the title role in Dr. Giggles).

After Bubba's best friend Marylee (Tonya Crowe), a young neighborhood girl, is attacked by a dog, he is blamed for her injuries and summarily executed by Hazelrigg and his bloodthirsty cronies. They find him hiding in the cornfield dressed as a scarecrow and shoot him to death, planting a weapon - a pitchfork - on his body. They're quickly found not guilty by the local court. So before the killings even begin, the real terror can be found in the atrocities committed by closed-minded human beings on the less fortunate. Blammo. Film theory.

Needless to say, somebody wants revenge on Hazelrigg and his posse, the dim-witted yokel mechanic Skeeter (Robert F. Lyons), the greedy feed factory owner Philby (Claude Earl Jones of the same year's Evilspeak), and their less interesting friend Harless (Lane Smith). I guess you could say he's the DUFF of the group. Somebody is pursuing them, placing scarecrows outside their homes to taunt them, and murdering them in respectfully chaste but darkly nasty ways.

The suspects abound, including Bubba's stern but loving mother (Jocelyn Brando, Marlon's older sister), his best friend Marylee, the D. A. (Tom Taylor of Maniac Cop) who lost the case against them, or maybe something more inexplicable.

My vote is on the little girl. She's hardcore. Those flower leis can crush a windpipe no sweat.

Dark Night of the Scarecrow certainly has its weak spots. I mean, come on, it is a TV movie. The acting is a little showy across the board, the sets are sparse (in one memorable sequence, Otis opens his massive desk drawer to reveal that its only contents are a single pistol), the opening sequence is laboriously extended, and its background soundscape is comprised of endlessly looped cicada chirps like the world's worst white noise sleep tape.

But the film more than makes up for its lo-fi splendor. First off, it's surprisingly dark. The scene where Mrs. Ritter is forced to explain to Marylee why she won't be seeing Bubba anymore rips out your heartstrings and plays a funeral dirge on them like a cello. Which is the saddest instrument. How are short musicians supposed to reach all the way up there?

But I digress. Dark Night of the Scarecrow is more than just a murder spree, because it has to be. With a focus on back home drama over gore (although the kills are all impactful and slyly foreshadowed), the story it tells is richly spooky and full of intrigue. And as Otis and his buds tear their way through the town in a mad dash to discover the culprit, their interactions reveal a detailed sketch of life in a rural town in the early 80's.

Sure, the screenwriters have probably never even eaten grits, let alone visited Texas, but the small town atmosphere crosses all borders. The community depicted here is full and lively, forming a realistic backdrop for the more uncanny scares.

"This is the least canny thing I've ever experienced!"

As for the scares themselves? They don't exactly come thick and fast, dispersed as they are amid the townspeople's frequent interactions. But when they arrive, they're terrifically bone chilling and effective. The presence of the scarecrow constantly lingers in the back of one's mind, so whenever a character gazes out of the frame, the shivers return before anything is even revealed. Not to mention that the scarecrow design itself is quite impeccable. It's a shame the film never saw a bigger audience, because that would be one award-winning Halloween costume if anybody actually cared to recreate it.

All in all, I'd without a doubt tout this film as a lost second tier classic. It doesn't have the camp factor of a House on Sorority Row or the deft intellect of a Nightmare on Elm Street, but it's worth recognition. Do I wish the protagonists weren't also despicable human beings? Yes. Am I glad to watch them inch closer and closer to their inevitable demise? Hell yes. It's a balance, I suppose. Check out Dark Night of the Scarecrow if you're in the mood for some low key, but hair-raising fun!

Killer: The Scarecrow [The ghost of Bubba Ritter (Larry Drake)]
Final Girl: None
Best Kill: Philby is buried alive in his feed silo until only his flapping, helpless hand is visible.
Sign of the Times: Nothing in particular, but Skeeter's trademark polka dot hat is pretty atrocious.

Scariest Moment: Whenever the scarecrow appears, heralding the next death.

Weirdest Moment: While a dog mauls Marylee, the scene cuts away to close-up shots of unimpressed garden gnomes.

Champion Dialogue: "The only thing official you ever done is lick stamps!"
Body Count: 6; only three of which are perpetrated by the Scarecrow.

1. Bubba is shot to death.
2. Harless falls into a woodchipper.
3. Mrs. Ritter has a heart attack.
4. Philby is buried alive in his feed silo.
5. Skeeter is hit in the head with a shovel.
6. Otis is pitchforked in the gut. 

TL;DR: Dark Night of the Scarecrow makes good use of its limitations to be a deliciously creepy low budget chiller.
Rating: 7/10
Word Count: 1174

Census Bloodbath: At Death's Door

Year: 1981

Director: Alan Beattie

Cast: Patricia Pearcy, David Hayward, John Dukakis

Run Time: 1 hour 20 minutes

MPAA Rating: R

Now this brings me back. Now that summer has wound down and school has wound up, many of my special features have taken hiatus or drawn themselves to completion and I can return to my school routine - namely, jamming in slasher movies during any long break in my day. 

And the first to receive such treatment is a decent throwback to some of the better movies of my 1980 run - more focused on mystery and intrigue than gore and sleaze (love those things though I do) - The House Where Death Lives, also known by the vastly inferior title Delusion.

A movie apparently so rare that this is the coolest screenshot I can find of it.

Meredith Stone (Patricia Pearcy) is a Final Girl wrought from the days of yore - she doesn't drink, she's quiet and amiable, and she has the relaxed good looks of a time-warped Amy Adams. When she takes a nursing job for the wheelchair-bound Ivar Langrock (Joseph Cotten, whose pedigree includes a little-known gem of a film called Citizen Kane) at Fairlawn, his grand estate, she has no idea what she's getting herself into.

You see, Langrock's son has just passed away and his grandson Gabriel (John Dukakis) is coming to live with him. But, having grown up on a commune in Tucson eating snakes, his uncouth and strange behavior is like a cross between between Eliza Doolittle and an avalanche. When people in the house begin dying soon after his arrival, it's no cramp on the imagination to assume that he is the culprit.

But is he really? Meredith isn't sure. Partly because Gabriel's strange magnetism has awakened a dark sexual desire in her. Partly because Langrock's mentally challenged and violent son Wilfred (Patrick Pankhurst) is currently locked up on the second floor. Or is it someone else entirely?

It is up to her to discover the truth as everyone in the house is put at risk, including Duffy (Alice Nunn, also of the same year's Dark Night of the Scarecrow), the Irish cook who despises protein and makes killer granola; Alex (Abraham Alvarez), the groundskeeper; Jeffrey Frasier (David Hayward), womanizer and Langrock's personal attorney/mustachioed friend; and Phillip (Leon Charles), the Langrock's devoted butler who is also devoted to draining every single wine bottle kept down in the cellar.

Here are... some of them. Screenshots are hard, guys.

The House Where Death Lives is a fascinating curio, somewhere between a slasher Jane Eyre and a classic Agatha Christie mystery. It's not exploitative by any means - the deaths don't start until long after the halway point and are quite demure when they eventually arrive. And there's somehow no exposed flesh, despite featuring a sex scene and a two minute bathtub scene. It's like they were trying to prove how chaste they were.

But The House Where Death Lives is not quite so far from the slasher genre as you might think, including but not limited to that terrifically flamboyant title. It also features several classic slasher tropes like dream sequences and cheap jump scares, but when it's surrounded by such a, dare I say, classy atmosphere, it surprisingly works. It's astonishing how engaging these moments end up being, and I'm embarrassed to admit I was caught up in them hook, line, and sinker.

But I have an excuse, for the film as it stands is far from typical. Name me one other slasher film smart enough to name their main suspect after the Angel of Death. It's not Shakespearean genius, but the brain pulsing under the surface of The House Where Death Lives makes it a wild card, drawing you into its heady vapors.

Much like... Oh, I give up. She IS pretty, though.

It's not quite a romp, but it's a remarkably decent effort. There's not enough gore, behind-the-camera talent, fun, and/or thrills to render it a true lost classic, but it absolutely doesn't deserve to be as overlooked as it is. The House Where Death Lives is a murder mystery populated with a sheaf of well-rounded characters played by capable performers (the late Leon Charles is a standout, fabulously underplaying a character that could have been an obnoxious drunk), which immediately ranks it higher than most of the dreck I've had to sit through, at least on the storytelling level.

It is undone a bit by a sluggish third act and a predictable ending, but the movie holds out at least one solid gut punch for its finale, proving once again that despite its generic tendencies, someone involved in the film was actually trying. And despite the massive withering effect the final moments have on the tension of the piece, that's something worthy of respect.

SPOILERS [The ending is interesting. It's predictable that Meredith is the killer thanks to her dark past - her mother was committed to a mental institution after being raped by her father, but the ultimate reveal throws in an unexpected third element. The mother is actually her, utilizing a Psycho-ized split personality to shift her shame. It's not groundbreaking and the way it comes about is remarkably clumsy, but it does justice to the solid mystery that came before it.]

The House Where Death Lives won't be remembered in twenty years as a great film, even by me. But for those 80 minutes I spent hunched over a computer in my empty Broadcasting classroom, I was transported to another world that I couldn't bring myself to want to leave.

Killer: [Meredith Stone (Patricia Pearcy)]

Final Girl: Meredith Stone (Patricia Pearcy)

Best Kill: Phillip is crushed by a wine rack - an interesting metaphor for his alcoholism (or, you know, it's cool).

Sign of the Times: Just look at this tool.

Scariest Moment: Wilfred charges at Meredith when she investigates his room.

Weirdest Moment: For two minutes, the film briefly becomes a film noir interrogation scene.

Champion Dialogue: "Take a look at this supermarket art. A cripple is driven to it."

Body Count: 6; Not including Nicholas the Dog and a poor poor snail.

1. Wilfred is bludgeoned and tossed out the window.
2. Phillip is crushed by a wine rack and bludgeoned. 
3. Detective Harmon is stabbed.
4. Alex is stabbed with a pitchfork.
5. [Gabriel is stabbed with a table leg.]
6. Jeffrey is bludgeoned with a table leg.

TL;DR: The House Where Death Lives is not a particular standout in the genre, but is a remarkably engaging watch.

Rating: 6/10

Word Count: 1089