A BBC Christmas ghost story, based on a short story by M.R. James, this kicked off a tradition of Christmas James BBC adaptations which would happen annually for years to come. It is a mind-blowingly good piece of work. Spooky, odd, and weirdly grounded, while also being utterly unmoored, this 45 minute vignette holds up as one of the best ghost films I’ve seen. And it is fully a film. Made on a very modest budget for TV, nothing feels televisual about this. Artfully shot, eerily scored, and rooted around a rivetingly unique central performance, I have trouble expressing just how impressed I was by it all.
It is striking that a film in which so little actually happens can be both so engrossing and so unsettling. We follow an elderly Professor Perkins, as embodied so fully by Hordern, a bundle of muttering, inarticulate arrogance, to his holiday at a seaside house where the workers and other guests have to put up with his pontificating and fussiness. Just trying to make polite conversation, another guest over breakfast asks if he believes in ghosts and his rambling answer is so belittling and tangential that the attempt surely will not be repeated. One day, whilst walking along the beach, he finds an old bone whistle with a Latin engraving on the side, “Quis est iste qui venit” (“Who is this who is coming?”). He sees shadowy figures on the beach behind him.
Later, in his room, he blows the whistle and a wind storm begins outside. That night, he has terrible dreams and wakes to find that the other bed in his room has also been slept in. The next night, an apparition seems to reveal itself, leaving the professor a broken, blubbering mess. That’s the whole story. Almost nothing happens.
But it is all so haunting. So unnerving. Beautiful to look at and quietly chilling to inhabit, the film even has its moments of small humor in watching this odd character have his smug certitude shaken, and in the process, his ego shattered, by this encounter with the unknown. And the unknown remains unknown to the last. As viewers, we never really know what has happened or why, but we see the extremity of its effect. We can dwell in its ominous threat and follow the professor’s rapid descent into madness.
It’s great when you’ve long heard the praises sung of some obscure flick and when you finally sit down to watch it, even if it’s only a low res copy of an old VHS recorded off of TV, posted on Youtube, it really delivers the goods. What a treat. This is one of those.
Dark Night of the Scarecrow (1981)
Aired on CBS as a TV movie of the week circa Halloween 1981, this really almost feels like a theatrical feature. Frank De Felitta’s film, reportedly low budget (and I suppose it has few locations or technical requirements), looks so much better than plenty of things that made it into the cinema, and certainly better than many low budget features today. And it really works. Using simple means, it has atmosphere for days. The performances from a bunch of recognizable character actors are great. There is tension and suspense, and an emotional payoff at the end of this tale of possibly supernatural vengeance.
The story feels like something out of Tales from the Crypt, or an old horror comic, but is presented very cleanly, with warmth and humanity. In a small town in the south, Bubba Ritter (Larry Drake), a developmentally disabled man, is hunted down and executed by a gang of good ol’ boys who have never liked him and in this moment believe him responsible for the death of a young girl. His mother had hid him in plain sight, disguised as a scarecrow out in a field, and when the posse finds him, he is totally defenseless. It is only after putting 21 gun shots into him that they hear on the radio that Marylee, the young girl, is alive, and that Bubba had in fact saved her life. They stick a pitchfork in his hand and claim self-defense.
The charges against them dropped, the four killers, one by one, find a scarecrow just like the one Bubba had been hiding in planted near their homes, before they are dispatched in some brutal manner (such as being ground up in farm equipment). In the end, it comes down to the ringleader, local Postman Otis Hazelrigg (Charles Durning), who terrorizes various people he suspects of being behind the Scarecrow before finally and satisfyingly receiving his comeuppance. It is in this evil-act-being-punished story arc that we really summon the old EC material. That and some solid creepy imagery.
And the environment is such a player here. In the beginning, when we see Bubba and Marylee making daisy chains in a meadow, the world feels so idyllic, at peace. But after Bubba’s murder, the wind suddenly rises to a gale, threatening to blow his killers away. We see a similar moment after the men are found not guilty and sit in a local bar, drinking and celebrating. It is as if Nature itself rages at the crime, as if the killing tears a hole in things (society, Bubba’s family, justice) and from that hole, something terrible must come.
For a simple made for TV movie, the film making is strong – dynamic and dramatic. Dutch angles and snap zooms abound, and there is some really fun, playful, over the top editing. A mother’s scream cuts to the squeal of truck tires tearing around a corner, carrying bloody minded vigilantes. A gas nozzle on a stove is intercut with a blazing fireplace, zooming in closer and closer on each until the house erupts in flame. A man hangs from a light over his brush machine, screaming for help before losing his grasp, right before a cut to a dollop of red preserves (raspberry perhaps?) being dropped onto a white plate at breakfast the next morning. While the story itself is dark and heavy, the film is fun, the film making even somewhat whimsical. A slasher aired on network TV in prime time, we see some drops of blood, but minimal gore.
But have no doubt; the story has weight and heft. There is real threat and surprising brutality. Durning’s Otis is, over the course of the story, revealed more and more to truly be monstrous. This was evident from the beginning, but Durning really goes to town as his character is overcome by paranoia, taking out his fears on his own compatriots, Bubba’s poor mother, and even young Marylee (whom Bubba’s mother had accused him of watching with ill intent).
There is a scene of note when he’s tracked the poor girl to the church’s Halloween party and corners her in a hallway to grill her about Bubba’s mother. She looks so uncomfortable in this older man’s presence and the threat that he might try to harm her is palpable. Fortunately, a security guard intervenes, pointedly telling Otis that the party is in the front room. However, it is telling that nothing more is said. This creep is chasing after a child and is obviously up to no good, but the guard says nothing about that, does nothing – meaning that Otis is free to attack her again later. Some things won’t be said, some things will be allowed – at least for certain members of society. Others will just be lynched.
Which brings us to one of the most striking aspects: For a film with no black characters, I think it’s impossible not to see race written all over it. I mean, the movie literally begins with a bunch of white guys with guns, feeling entitled to take the law into their own hands, hunting down an outsider (before there is any word of Marylee being attacked, Otis calls Bubba a ‘blight’ in the town, a ‘weed that must be ripped out,’ and it is obvious that these guys have long been harassing him and beating him for real or imagined infractions) with dogs, and then once he is tied up (with a sack over his head as if ready to be hanged), they gun him down, claiming that they’d felt threatened and were thus justified in their act. And the whole time, they’re having so much fun.
And the thing is, the court ultimately supports them and claims that there is no probable cause on which to base a trial, despite the fact that their victim was found tied to a pole and riddled with bullets. He had been holding a pitchfork (which they planted on him after the fact) and was thus sufficiently threatening to shoot twenty one times. The bias is clear, the judge admonishing the district attorney, “These men are members of the community. They’re not criminals.” Finally, after this verdict comes down, they are met by the joyous cries of the community waiting outside the court. They are welcomed back and everyone can have a laugh about it all at the bar later. Only Marylee and Mrs. Ritter, Bubba’s mother, seem to feel that Bubba’s Life Mattered.
And thus, it is so satisfying to see that somehow justice is being done, that these men who had decided to carry out this extra-judicial killing in turn have no recourse to the law and are hounded, terrorized, and finally killed themselves. In this, the film is also very successful. There is a mystery of who is doing this killing. Is it the bereaved mother? The young girl, driven mad by having her best friend slain? The district attorney, so offended by a miscarriage of justice? Is it Bubba himself, back from the dead. Or is it the wind? The pain? The absence? Just as Otis and his gang desperately try to determine who is after them, it kept me guessing as well until the very end.
This is a great little movie. Maybe it’s not the most harrowing experience ever put to celluloid, but the fear is present. In Bubba’s eyes, glimpsed through holes in the sack before he’s killed. In the four men as they are in turn hunted and killed. In Otis as he throws anyone under the bus who might be a threat to him, murders piling up on all sides. And it does all build to such a terrifically Halloween-y ending: a chase through a pumpkin patch by moonlight before a final act of much deserved vengeance is undertaken, and one last bit of spookiness is revealed.
At the same time, it is an all too familiar parable of justice denied. This week, it seems to particularly reflect real life events, but I don’t think it matters when you’re reading this. The story is sadly evergreen. Some are allowed to kill and some to be killed and scarecrows very rarely rise to see that justice is done.
