NIGHT OF THE SCARECROW (JEFF BURR 1995)
A small towns past comes back to haunt it when a warlock is ressurected into the body of a scarecrow and begins killing off anyone who gets in his way when he goes looking for his spell book.
Jeff Burr is one of those directors that seems to have the ability to make a silk purse out of a sows ear, or in this case make straight to video trash look well executed and enjoyable. This film was engineered as an attempt to start a franchise and the scarecrow was supposed to be a freddy krueger style villain (not Burrs idea according to the excellent commentary track) and in lesser hands could have ended up a totally forgettable mess. Fortunately its actually a lot of fun. Flawed perhaps, but then it was made in the mid nineties before Scream was about to bring horror movies back to cinemas so for me it exemplifies the qualities of the straight-to-video horrors I used to rent religiously. The film was actually shot 35mm so the Blu looks fantastic.
Unfortunately the disc, like a lot of olives output these days, is region locked. A shame because I dont actually see a UK release anywhere on the horizon so its hard to imagine their treading on any toes with this one. It sits perfectly next to NIGHT OF THE DEMONS 2 and TICKS and I hope Olive unearth more nineties shockers to blu-ray.
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