Ah,here's one that takes me back to the salad days when neighborhood vandalism replaced trick or treating for me.Seriously,if you happen to be one of the thousands of individuals I preyed upon every October 30th(I <3 Mischief Night),well,that'd make you pretty old,wouldn't it.What?You were expecting appy-polly-lodgies?Not a fuckin' chance,dicks.Be glad I finally grew too old for that sort of thing,or I'd be burnin' ya every year still.Anyway,back to the movie.After watching it debut a week before Halloween in 1981(it played seasonally for quite a while afterwards,too),I can remember calling my buddies on the phone and talking about it for days afterwards.Probably the last of the truly great made-for-television horror movies,directed by Frank De Felitta,who wrote the novels for Audrey Rose(...which he also produced."Hothothothothothothot!")and The Entity.It's safe to say that this is the best work he's ever done.A perfectly executed,poignantly cautionary tale that fits in with the Samhain spirit as well as jack o'lanterns and articulated cardboard skeletons thumbtacked to your front door.There are classic performances by Charles Durning,who you'll know as Peter's father in Family Guy and Pappy O'Daniel in the Coens' O Brother Where Art Thou?,Larry Drake of LA Law and Darkman fame,who also scored big genre points in 1971's This Stuff'll Kill Ya and 1977's The Electric Chair,directed by HGL-goremeister,J.G. "Pat" Patterson.Tonight's entry was officially released on dvd by VCI a few weeks ago,so you can finally put those grainy bootlegged dvd-r's out to pasture,and add this must-see to your collections just in time for the holiday.
"Aloha,you big dopey waterhead!", or Bubba(Larry Drake) gets lei'd.
Bubba Ritter(Drake) is a gentle oaf,hulking and harmless.He spends lazy afternoons with a young local girl named Marylee(Tonya Crowe) picking flowers in the meadow.Though theirs is an innocent friendship,the reality of intolerance in the south(the village idiot interacting with little girls is frowned upon,yet inevitable in such a place) is ever-present,looming over the man's head.After Bubba saves his tiny friend from a vicious dog attack,Otis(Durning),the town mailman(and judge and jury,apparently)wrongfully assumes the girl has been raped and killed by the retarded man after seeing her unconscious body lying at the doctor's office,and forms a lynch mob to dole out some backwoods justice,sending the terrified man running to the protection of his mama,who instructs him to play the "hiding game",where he disguises himself as a scarecrow posted in a field until the trouble subsides.The mailman's bloodhounds quickly sniff out the waterhead's whereabouts and he's soon on the receiving end of a hail of vigilante-administered bullets,eating scorching hot gunpowder death.Afterwards the letter-bringer and his three accomplices discover that not only is little Marylee alive and well,but the frightened retard they've just mowed down,had saved her from the cantankerous canine.Oops.Covering his tracks,Otis props a pitchfork in the corpse's hands,to veil their crime as an act of self defense,which,combined with a lack of witnesses,sees the four men go free in court,but not before Bubba's grief-stricken mother can offer a prophetic warning about judgement from a higher power.Knock,knock.Who's there?Violent.Violent who?Violent karmic implications for all sorry bastards involved,that's who.
Insert your own obligatory "mailman going postal" joke here.
The following evening,the aptly named Harliss Hocker gets chewed up and spit out real good by his own woodchipper,after noticing an ominous scarecrow not unlike the one Bubba hid inside mysteriously appearing in his field earlier that afternoon.Two of the other perpetrators,Skeeter and Philby(don't you love these names?)inform Otis of Harliss' fate,and when the mailman investigates the scene of the accident,nothing adds up.The mailman is quick to point the finger at Bubba's mother,who denies all involvement while promising an ice cold bowl of justice for the remaining guilty parties.When Philby discovers a scarecrow on his property,Otis goes to Mrs. Ritter for answers,and when she suffers a heart attack under the stress,he turns the gas stove up with the fireplace lit,effectively destroying all crime scene evidence.Meanwhile,the otherworldly scarecrow traps Philby in his own silo,turning on the conveyor belt in,burying the son of a bitch under a mountain of grain-based retribution.Skeeter panics and threatens to turn himself in,forcing Otis to prove that Bubba's body still lies dead in its grave by digging it up.Otis then turns the blade of his spade upon the back of the last remaining co-conspiritor's domepiece,and reburies both bodies before driving off.On the road he notices Marylee,who he chases into a pumpkin patch,accusing her of the rash of recent scarecrow shennanigans.A payloader/plougher turns itself on and chases the pudgy redneck into the patch,pulverizing gourds in its wake,causing the mailman to accidentally run into the scarecrow,who is holding a pitchfork that Otis realizes he has just shishkabobbed himself upon.He points at the scarecrow,who nods and walks off to Marylee,handing her a flower.She thanks her straw-stuffed friend,and promises to teach him the chasing game tomorrow.
All that violently retributive death reigned down upon the ignorant townsfolk,Bubba did,in fact,do.
The script was originally intended for independent release before being bought up by CBS,who wisely left it largely intact.The Key Video VHS fetches a pretty penny and is pretty hard to come by these days,but then,I can't understand the whole recent resurgence in video cassette popularity to begin with.I,for one,will never miss monkeying with the tracking adjustment on a beat-assed rental tape for ten minutes before being able to sit down to enjoy the movie.I dumped off literally thousands of VHS years ago when I came into the new millenium with the DVD format.Whatever floats your boats,folks.Seriously kiddies,on the matter of Dark Night,which I feel succeeds on all levels,you'll be hardpressed to find a finer shocker built for the small screen.We'll be examining some more cathode horror this week,going further back into the vaults.One of these days I'll post my top made-for-television horror movies of all-time,which tonight's entry easily finds itself in.Highly recommended,and the highest rating scale mark possible is in order.
Awwww.Happy endings always make me a little wet in the oculars.
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