Scarecrow (2002)

You know what I realised, I've been doing this for a year, I need to do something for my one year anniversary!....Well, okay, my one year anniversary was actually in August so I should have done it with my one hundredth post...even though really the ninty-ninth post should really be the one year anniversary...screw it, this is my one year anniversary post! And like the one hundredth post, I need to do something special, ladies and gentlemen, 'Scarecrow'!

Here we find high school student Lester Dwervick (Played by Tim "I'm too old for this role" Young), who is pretty much the unluckiest guy alive. How I forgot about this guy when I did the top ten unluckiest bastards/bitches list I will never know, since pretty much everyone hates him. Well, okay I lie his mum and his love interest don't hate him. But seriously, the guy gets insulted by pretty much everyone else, even his teacher, who tells us his entire back story in like two lines.

Then there's the fact that he is constantly bullied by his fellow students, and his mother is being screwed by Super Mario. Wow Mario really has hit rock bottom. I'm not entirely sure what his actual character name is, since the guy laughs so loud and Lester's mother (Played by....?) is so damn quiet. Lester fancies fellow student Judie (Played by well known scream queen/B movie actress Tiffany Shepis), who seems to be the only other decent human being in this town and stands up for him. However upon seeing Judie being kissed (Or rather forced upon) by his worst tormentor Chad (John Moore). Angry, he confronts Mario, who ends up chasing Lester into a cornfield and kills him. A year (According to the back of the DVD box anyway, though according to Chad it's been at least two months since he and Morgan (Jen Richy) have been going out) Lester returns as a scarecrow and proceeds to butcher the entire town.

And really who can blame him? I literally have no sympathy for anybody in this town, really the only people who don't bully Lester is Judie and his mother. He has the standard bully, but as I mentioned he's also bullied by his teacher, heck, even his boss doesn't give a rat's ass about him. Hell, at the funeral only Judie and the gravedigger (Played by....?) are shown being present! Not even his mother is shown being there!

And this town is apparently the capital of kids growing up to become serial killers. Don't believe me? Well obviously there's Lester, and two kids who were throwing rocks at Lester in Scarecrow form, who are also idiots since they don't know why a scarecrow is called a scarecrow (there's a clue in the name) and apparently think the chest is called a face, anyway as they leave one says "Let's find a small animal to torture"(!). Also the cornfield is where all the cool kids hang out. Really Lester/Scarecrow is the only likeable character, and even then you wonder why when he starts killing people you haven't seen in the film before. He even kills the likeable Gravedigger character through the power of slow motion!

The acting in this is bad. Really, really bad. Tiffany Shepis, Tim Young and Todd Rex are the only real highlights. Shepis gives a better than average performance, Young actually does a decent job at playing the outcast, and Rex does a great job as the Scarecrow. Then again I think all Rex does is flip around the films set since I'm pretty sure the voice we hear is not his real one. Richard Elfman...or Astride Sumatra apparently (Well to be honest I'd give a fake name for the credits in this too) and Jason Simon also give adequate performances as Sheriff Patterson and Eddie Barclay respectively, but everyone else...*shudders.

I don't even know who to start with. How about all of them? With the exception of those I've already mentioned, no-one else seemed that bothered with the film. No-one gave any hint of emotion, no-one thought at all about what was going on in the scene when they delivered their lines. The worse one was Roxanna Bina (Who plays Stephanie), wow was she bad. Even her screaming was awful. Hell, the acting in this film was so bad, it effectively ended careers. Indeed, there's quite a few people in this film who only have this film on their filmography, or they only starred in one or two more productions since this film, including Roxanna Bina, John Moore, Jen Richey, Jason Simon, and Sonja Ecker. This film is officially a Career Killer.

I also feel I have to mention this. The film is set in 1987. Apparently.Well, the last half is if it's set a year after Lester's death which, according to the newspaper during a montage, was reported on Monday the 19th August 1986. And apparently even the school don't give a damn about Lester, as the headline reads 'Emerald Grove Youth Takes His Own Life - Graduation Proceeds as Planned'. That's effectively "Move along, nothing to see here". Also if you actually read the article, it talks about a killer scarecrow and has backward writing. Although this does raise a question about if graduation proceeds as normal and Lester is resurrected a year later, why are the..."high school" students STILL at high school? But apparently time has passed, since Lester's mother has kicked out Mario and is now going out with another stereotypical redneck, and Morgan has Lester's old job. And apparently they stopped publishing the news after this day since Sheriff Patterson (Richard Elfman...or Astride Sumatra...whatever) is still reading it months/a year later.

The effects, I suppose are good for what this film is, but basically you can get what this film has down at your local joke shop. The editing though is some of the worst I've seen, with one scene the prime example, when Chad and Morgan are chatting in the car. The scene cuts into the same shot about five or six times, and the only thing I can think of was that it required multiple cuts. Did the two people involve really screw up the scene THAT much? And then there's all the pointless padding shots which just go on and on and on, as well as reusing shots. I thought only films made by the Asylum and whoever was behind 'Battleship' (Sorry I'll try and move on from that) reuse shots. Huh, this film was (partially) done the Asylum (At least according to IMDB and the opening credits). Weird.

And you know what? I love it.

This was the 'Birdemic'/'The Room' of 2002. It has been described as so bad it's good, and it really is. The acting is horrendous, the story is poor, the dialogue is awful, none of the characters (save the killer) are likeable, the puns in it will make James Bond blush, and yet, I am actually fond of this film. I can't really put my finger on why, I suppose it's because this film is just so hilariously bad and I love the villain. The villain is the perfect example of a 'tragic villain' and I do love those (If you remember). Then there's the energy the Scarecrow gives, and while the puns were bad, they were hilariously bad. This is not a good film, it's not even an okay film, but it is one of the most entertaining films I have seen in a long time.

And then there's the sequel..................s.