Sure it’s plenty dumb, but this supernatural tale of vengeful zombie scarecrows has always been a favorite of mine. A group of five paramilitary types have just pulled of a successful bank robbery and have kidnapped a pilot and his daughter to fly them to safety. Once airborne one of the army types gets a little greedy and tries to blow up the plane, jumping off with all of the money in hand. Flying over a rather secluded area the dude lands in a giant cornfield full of huge crosses and of course, lots and lots of spooky looking scarecrows. The rest of the bandits land the plane in pursuit of their double-crossing friend and while in search, stumble across a deserted cabin whose previous owners (of course) appeared to have been admirers of Old Scratch himself. Soon it’s an all out battle between the robbers and scarecrows of whom aren’t to keen on trespassers.

What I really dug on this flick was despite the typical low budget bug-a-boos like bad acting and really lousy dialogue, the film achieves on actually being somewhat creepy and atmospheric. The scenes of the scarecrows hanging from those big crosses worked well, and the film is laced throughout with some nice little atmospheric touches. The evil scarecrows are of course the carrying point of the film as they attack their victims the way only pissed off scarecrows can. Pitchforks, scythes, knives, and arrows are all plunged into human flesh with gleeful abandon, and if you have the rare “unrated” version, the flick gets pretty gory at times. As for the characters the film does not really have a hero in the typical sense of the word, as practically everyone in the movie is fairly unlikable except for perhaps the pilot’s young daughter who’s the only “innocent” of the bunch. She’s also pretty darn cute and looked damn good running from the scarecrows, all essential info to this review of course. I could have used a little more back-story on the Satanists who lived in the cabin with perhaps an explanation of how they are controlling the scarecrows, but oh well.

Overall, for a low budget film that was released with little or no fanfare “Scarecrows” has gained something of a cult audience over the years and it’s easy to see why. Some creepy atmosphere, decent pacing, and of course pissed off zombie scarecrows. What’s there not to like? A sequel was planned many a year ago but unfortunately never came to fruition. Definitely worth a look if you stumble across a copy as it is pretty hard to find nowadays. Just make sure you go “unrated” so you get all the scarecrow carnage intact.