Tom Taylor | Through the Shattered Lens

Dude, this movie.

Charles Durning plays Otis P. Hazelrigg, a postman in a small town who has an unhealthy interest in a ten year-old girl named Marylee (Tanya Crowe). When Marylee is mauled and nearly killed by a dog, Otis decides that she was attacked by Bubba Ritter (Larry Drake), a mentally challenged man who has the mind of a child. With Otis and his redneck friends looking to lynch him, Bubba’s mother disguises him as a scarecrow and tells him to stand out in a field and not move. When Otis and his friends discover Bubba hiding, they all shoot him until he’s dead. Otis puts a pitchfork in Bubba’s hands and tells the police that Bubba was attacking them and they didn’t have any choice but to shoot him.

Otis thinks that he’s gotten away with murder but he’s wrong. After Marylee sings a song in the same field where Bubba was killed, Otis’s friends start dying. One is suffocated in a grain silo. Another falls into a thresher. Before each one dies, they report seeing a scarecrow on their property. Otis thinks that Bubba’s mother is behind the murders but what if Bubba has actually come back to life?

Dark Night of the Scarecrow will mess up your mind, give you bad dreams, and leave you with a lifelong phobia o scarecrows. It’s that scary. I remember that they used to frequently show this movie on TV when I was growing up and even the commercials were scary. (The part of the movie that always messed with me were the shots of Bubba’s frightened eyes darting around underneath the scarecrow mask.) Scarecrows are naturally creepy and the movie’s atmosphere is unsettling but the most frightening thing about Dark Night of the Scarecrow is Otis and the redneck lynch mob that he puts together. Otis is a thoroughly loathsome character and Charles Durning goes all out playing him. Otis is a civil servant, which gives him some prestige in the town but he uses that prestige to bully Bubba and harass Marylee. His concern with Marylee especially feels wrong and the movie does not shy away from the subtext of his interest. The scarecrow might frighten you but you will absolutely loathe Otis and everyone who follows him.

Dark Night of the Scarecrow was made for television but it’s just as good as any theatrical release. It is also might be the first movie to feature a killer scarecrow. Several have been made in the years since but Dark Night of the Scarecrow was the first and it’s still the best.

What the Hell was The Dark Tower about, anyway?

It’s a legitimate question. I know that the film was technically a continuation of Stephen King’s overrated Dark Tower books. Matthew McConaughey was Walter, the Man in the Black, the man who is kidnapping psychic children so that he can weaponize their powers and destroy The Dark Tower. Idris Elba was Roland, the last of the gunslingers, who is obsessed with killing Walter because Walter killed his father. And Tom Taylor is Jake, an eleven year-old boy who lives in New York City and who keeps having visions of the Tower, Walter, and Roland. Walter wants Jake. Roland wants Walter. Jake wants to understand it all…

And that’s pretty much the entire movie. Jake switches back and forth between his world and Roland’s world. Walter occasionally pops up in New York so that he can kill Jake’s family and assure that Jake won’t have any reason not to continue traveling with Roland at the end of the movie. It all basically feels like the pilot for a television series and, to be honest, it probably wouldn’t be that bad of a show. For one thing, if The Dark Tower was a tv show, there would be more of an opportunity to develop the characters of Roland, Walter, and Tom. The Dark Tower movie only last 95 minutes and the majority of those minutes feel very rushed.

Obviously, if you’ve read Stephen King’s Dark Tower books, this film will be easier for you to follow than it will be for people who have never had to suffer through them. I know I’m in the minority as far as this is concerned but I find The Dark Tower series to be King at his most pretentious. Interestingly enough, a little bit of pretension probably would have helped the film version of The Dark Tower. As it is, The Dark Tower is almost too workmanlike and straight-forward. It could have really used a pointless Stephen King-style soliloquy about faith, innocence, and horror. At the very least, they could have had someone in the background, droning on about politics in a Maine accent.

I have to admit that I really, really, really wanted to like The Dark Tower. I love Idris Elba. I love Matthew McConaughey. Even more importantly, I love being a contrarian. Whenever a film gets as many negative reviews as The Dark Tower, my natural instinct is always to assume that it has to be a secret masterpiece. I mean, seriously, who trusts critics? I really wanted to watch The Dark Tower and then write a 1,000-word defense of it. I was hoping that, much like The Counselor, it would turn out to be a masterpiece that only I could recognize.

Sadly, that didn’t turn out to be the case. I will say that Matthew McConaughey seemed to be having a sincerely good time playing the bad guy. And Idris Elba had just the right mix of weariness and compassion to play Roland. But otherwise, the movie just felt so pointless.

Overall, this has been a pretty good year for Stephen King film adaptations. It deserves to be nominated for an Oscar, though it won’t be. Gerald’s Game made people thankful for Netflix. The Dark Tower, though, will be quickly forgotten.