William Wesley | Through the Shattered Lens

Welcome to Late Night Retro Television Reviews, a feature where we review some of our favorite and least favorite shows of the past! On Wednesdays, I will be reviewing Monsters, which aired in syndication from 1988 to 1991. The entire series is streaming on YouTube.

This week, we have the second-to-last episode of Monsters!

Episode 3.23 “The Maker”

(Dir by William Wesley, originally aired on April 18th, 1991)

Mack (Philip Anglim), a suit-wearing vagrant, wanders into what he thinks is an abandoned hotel. Mack just wants a place to spend the night and he’s shocked to discover that the hotel is also occupied by Freddy Fredericks (Eddie Bracken), a former stage magician who is now an alcoholic. When Mack asks how an abandoned building has electricity, Freddy explains that he can create things with his mind. Mack is skeptical so Freddy creates an apple and a banana. Mack asks for money and Freddy creates that. It’s quite a power except there always seems to be some small mistake. For instance, the money has Mack’s picture on it. When Freddy tries to create gold, he creates brass instead. Mack decides that the alcohol is holding Freddy back and he demands that Freddy quit cold turkey.

Bad idea.

When someone can create things just by thinking about them, the last thing you want is for that persons to get the DTs.

This, the second-to-last installment of Monsters, was definitely an effective episode. It wasn’t perfect. It got off to a slow start and Eddie Bracken occasionally went a bit overboard as Freddy. But the idea of Freddy’s alcoholism inhibiting his powers was a good one and the episode took it in a pretty clever direction. The monster — half snake/half-woman — that was created by Freddy’s DTs was genuinely frightening and the episode’s final twist not only made sense but it also worked. All in all, it was a very good episode.

Next week, we’ll finish up Monsters with a Stephen King adaptation starring Tom Noonan.

The 1988 film Scarecrows is one that has a very simple but also very effective premise.

Scarecrows are scary as Hell.

And you know what? There’s a lot to be said for the premise. Seriously, I have no problem with clowns but scarecrows definitely make me nervous. It’s the way that they’re just left out there in the middle of a field, tied to a post and seemingly staring at the world through black eyes. I know that some people try to make scarecrows less creepy by giving them smiles but, to me, a smiling scarecrow is even creepier than a scarecrow with no expression at all. At night, whenever you see the shadow of a scarecrow in the distance, it’s always easy to imagine it climbing off of its post and walking towards your house, its dark eyes focusing on your bedroom window the whole way. If you’re not scared of scarecrows, you’re not paying attention.

(Of course, perhaps the scariest thing about scarecrows is that crows don’t seem to be particularly scared of them. I mean, if the crows have figured out that they’re not human, what’s the point of having them unless you’re going to use them to summon evil spirits?)

Scarecrows opens with a daring heist. Five paramilitary mercenaries, people who are paid to fight and kill for a living, steal three million dollars from Camp Pendleton and then force pilot Al (David James Campbell) and his teenager daughter, Kellie (Victoria Christian), to fly them to Mexico. However, in the middle of the flight, one of the merceneries grabs the money and a parachute and jumps from the plane. Two other mercenaries jump after him while the remaining two force Al to land the airplane. The plane ends up landing outside of a small farm, one that appears to be deserted except for all the scarecrows….

Now, seriously, think about this. The majority of the characters in this film are mercenaries. They’ve been trained in every form of combat. They’ve got weapons and they know how to use them. They are used to fighting and, in fact, they even look forward to it. Not only are they mercenaries but they’ve also just successfully robbed a MARINE base. You don’t mess with the Marines unless you’re very stupid or very confident or maybe both. Adam Driver was a Marine. Do you want Adam Driver mad at you? My point is that these characters are not your run-of-the-mill horror movie victims.

And yet, one-by-one, they’re taken out by the scarecrows. We get a bit of backstory about the scarecrows when the mercenaries stumble across a farmhouse and discover that it was owned by three Satanists who transferred their souls into the scarecrows. But really, that’s not important. What is important is that the scarecrows will emerge from the darkness and kill anyone who lets their guard down. The scarecrows even talk to each other! TALKING SCARECROWS! AGCK!

Anyway, Scarecrows is an effective, quickly-paced, and atmospheric horror film, one that I really enjoyed when I watched it last October. The scarecrows make for efficient and frightening monsters. This is the film that proves that scarecrows are scarier than clowns.

Seriously, don’t mess with the scarecrow.