Straw-Filled Slasher Delight
Sometimes you don’t need a masked killer or an ancient curse. Sometimes all you need is a field, some hay, and mercenaries so dumb they make Scooby-Doo villains look like Navy SEALs. Enter Scarecrows (1988), the little direct-to-video horror film that could, written and directed by William Wesley, a man who clearly looked at a cornfield and thought, “Yeah, this is cinema.”
Filmed in 1985 but released a few years later after its distributor went belly-up, Scarecrows had every excuse to be forgotten. Instead, it’s become one of those cult gems whispered about in horror circles. Why? Because it delivers exactly what the title promises: murderous scarecrows stuffing people like Thanksgiving turkeys.
The Set-Up: Mercenaries Behaving Badly
The plot is straightforward, because films like this don’t need three acts so much as they need three kills per act. Five mercenaries steal three million dollars, hijack a plane, and take a pilot, his teenage daughter, and a German Shepherd hostage. Because crime doesn’t pay—and because horror movies demand it—one of the mercenaries betrays the others and parachutes into a field.
That field happens to belong to three long-dead Satanist farmers who still possess their homemade scarecrows. The mercenaries, used to dodging bullets and bombs, now find themselves hunted by hay-filled corpses wielding farm tools. Shakespeare this ain’t, but it’s bloody fun.
Murderous Muppets Made of Straw
What makes Scarecrows work is its monsters. These aren’t sleek, knife-wielding killers. They’re scarecrows—silent, lumbering, and possessed by spirits meaner than a redneck landlord. Their design is simple but effective: burlap sacks for heads, overalls, pitchforks, and the kind of creepy stillness that makes you second-guess every mannequin in a department store.
When they do move, it’s with a supernatural inevitability. They stab, they saw, they slice, and—most memorably—they gut their victims and stuff them with dollar bills. Yes, these aren’t just killer scarecrows. They’re artistic killer scarecrows. Performance art, really.
The stuffing motif makes the kills uniquely grotesque. Watching a mercenary’s corpse packed full of blood-soaked cash is both absurd and brilliant—like Gordon Gekko’s wet dream reimagined as a slasher gag.
The Mercenaries: Darwin Award Nominees
Of course, for killer scarecrows to shine, you need victims dumb enough to get within arm’s reach. Enter our mercenaries, who are professional soldiers but spend the film making worse choices than teenagers in a Friday the 13th sequel.
There’s Bert, the greedy double-crosser who jumps out of the plane with the loot and promptly lands in the wrong horror movie. There’s Corbin (Ted Vernon), the gruff leader who might have been intimidating if he weren’t constantly outwitted by hay bales. Curry (Michael David Simms) is the paranoid one, Jack (Richard Vidan) the cocky one, and Roxanne (Kristina Sanborn) is… well, the token woman who gets killed while reaching for cash. Subtlety was never the point here.
These aren’t characters. They’re walking bags of blood waiting to be punctured. And punctured they are, with gusto.
Gore and Atmosphere: Florida Delivers
Despite its shoestring budget, Scarecrows looks great. Shot in Davie, Florida, the film makes brilliant use of its cornfields, farmhouse, and overgrown groves. The atmosphere is pure Southern Gothic meets VHS nightmare: misty fields, moonlit scarecrows, and creaky houses full of family photos of the dead Satanist farmers who started it all.
The gore is practical, gloopy, and effective. Severed heads, dismembered limbs, and faces sawed open by farm tools all get their moment in the spotlight. Nothing looks too polished, but that only adds to the grindhouse charm. This is a film where blood looks sticky, dirt looks filthy, and the corpses look genuinely unpleasant to be around. In other words: perfect.
Highlight Kill: Bert, the Cash Piñata
Every slasher needs a signature kill, and Scarecrows delivers it early. Bert, the betrayer, gets gutted by the straw men, his abdomen hollowed out and stuffed with the very money he stole. Later, his zombified corpse returns, oozing blood-stained bills while his teammates try to rip cash from his insides. It’s grotesque, absurd, and darkly funny—capitalism distilled into a horror gag.
It’s the kind of kill that cements Scarecrows as more than just another slasher. It’s not just about death—it’s about humiliation. These mercenaries are torn apart not just by monsters, but by their own greed.
The Final Girl… Sort Of
In true horror fashion, Kellie (Victoria Christian), the pilot’s daughter, ends up as the closest thing to a final girl. She’s plucky, brave, and determined to keep her dog Dax alive. By the end, she’s flying the plane out of the nightmare cornfield—only to find herself stalked on board by her own zombified father.
It’s a bleak, nasty twist capped by an even nastier ending: a news broadcast reveals that Kellie survived, but her dog was found feasting on charred human remains. If you were hoping for catharsis, too bad. This is the kind of movie where the only winner is the scarecrows.
Why It Works (When It Shouldn’t)
By all rights, Scarecrows should have been forgotten. It’s low budget, direct-to-video, and stars no one you’ve ever heard of. But it works because it takes itself seriously. There are no winks to the camera, no meta jokes, no attempts to soften the absurd premise.
The mercenaries act like mercenaries. The scarecrows kill like scarecrows possessed by Satanist farmers should. The whole thing is played straight, which makes the ridiculousness all the more effective. When you see a man’s corpse stuffed with bloody dollar bills, it’s not a punchline—it’s a nightmare.
Dark Humor in the Details
That said, there’s plenty of unintentional comedy here. The mercenaries bicker over cash even as they’re hunted by straw-filled corpses. Roxanne slaps a teenage hostage because her father was killed—truly the mark of an emotionally stable adult. And the scarecrows themselves, while effective, sometimes look like rejected mascots for a county fair.
But that’s the charm. Scarecrows is both horrifying and hilarious, often in the same breath. It’s the rare slasher where you can laugh at the absurdity one moment and wince at the gore the next.
Final Verdict
Scarecrows isn’t high art. It’s not even mid-art. But it is a damn fine horror movie. Grim, atmospheric, gory, and filled with straw-stuffed insanity, it’s exactly the kind of low-budget gem that thrives on VHS nostalgia.
If you want polished, watch The Lost Boys. If you want something raw, weird, and uniquely unsettling, track down Scarecrows. Just don’t linger too long in any cornfields afterward—you never know who’s watching from the posts.
