Dark Night of the Scarecrow 1981

In a small town in the Deep South, the unlikely friendship between Bubba Ritter, [Larry Drake], a large but gentle man with a mental disability, and Marylee Williams, [Tonya Crowe], a keen and vulnerable young girl, stirs unease among the locals, especially the brooding Otis Hazelrigg, a harsh and resentful postal worker [Charles Durning]. When Marylee is mauled by a vicious dog, Hazelrigg quickly assumes Bubba is to blame and quickly fashions a lynch mob that includes Skeeter Norris, a gas station attendant [Robert F. Lyons], and Philby and Harliss Hocker, two farmers. In a desperate attempt to protect him, Bubba’s mother disguises him as a scarecrow and sets him in a nearby field, hoping to keep him safe. But the mob’s bloodhounds zero in on the scent, and Bubba is gunned down in cold blood by the vigilantes. Later, learning that Marylee survived thanks to Bubba’s intervention, Hazelrigg tries to cover his tracks by placing a pitchfork in Bubba’s dead hands, making it seem like Bubba attacked them all.

When the case goes to trial, the vigilantes are released for lack of concrete evidence, aided by Hazelrigg’s perjury, and the town breathes a tense relief that never quite quiets. Marylee recovers, and at night she slips away to the Ritter house to seek Bubba. Mrs. Ritter, unable to tell Marylee the brutal truth, instead tells her that Bubba has gone away. Marylee confronts this lie and, in a haunting moment, tells her caretaker that Bubba is not gone, only “playing the hiding game.” The sense of dread lingers as the story shifts toward eerie signs: a scarecrow reappears in another field, then vanishes, as Hazelrigg and his allies grow increasingly paranoid about who is orchestrating the strange events.

On a Halloween night during a church party, Marylee is confronted by Hazelrigg, who presses for a confession about Mrs. Ritter’s supposed plotting. Instead, Marylee reveals that she knows what Hazelrigg and his friends did to Bubba and bolts. A security guard prevents further confrontation, and Philby notes the scarecrow’s appearance, only for it to disappear when the trio investigates. That very night, Hazelrigg breaks into Mrs. Ritter’s home, frightening the family so badly that she suffers a fatal heart attack. To cover the deed, he stages a gas leak that destroys the house, leaving the townspeople to wonder whether it was mere accident or something more sinister. The local D.A. Sam Willock [Tom Taylor] grows suspicious as the tragedy compounds.

The next day, Philby is tormented by noises in his hog pen and an ominous presence in his barn; when he investigates, he is trapped in a grain silo as a conveyor belt springs to life and seals him inside, an avalanche of grain burying him alive. Hazelrigg and Skeeter Norris then suspect Bubba’s hand in these misfortunes, and Hazelrigg proposes that Bubba must be avenging himself. They go to Bubba’s grave, and Skeeter, opening the coffin, realizes the body is still inside. Hazelrigg silences him with brutal violence, smashing Skeeter’s skull and sealing the grave with him inside.

Driving while intoxicated, Hazelrigg encounters Marylee in the road and pursues her into a pumpkin patch. A plowing machine in the field starts up on its own as he closes in, and the terrified man—now convinced that Sam Willock is in the machine—fleees. He stumbles into the now-armed scarecrow, which bears Bubba’s pitchfork-tipped weapon in its grasp. Impaled and mortally wounded, Hazelrigg collapses as the scarecrow—possessed by Bubba’s spirit—appears to Marylee and offers her a final, spectral token of revenge: a flower. Marylee smiles as Bubba’s haunting presence looks down on her and whispers a silent blessing. She quietly murmurs a farewell to the life she had known, then resolves to teach Bubba a new game tomorrow.

“a life for a life.”

In the aftermath, the town must reckon with the consequences of fear and vengeance, and the story closes on a chilling note: a child’s gaze fixes on the scarecrow now standing sentry, a silent emblem of Bubba’s return and the enduring power of a selfless act.